Master the decision-making process: A successful team's comprehensive guide

The importance of effective decision-making

From projects to planning, making effective decisions takes practice, and sets the foundation for your success. While small, quick decisions may allow some flexibility, big-impact decisions are harder to reverse — so being able to successfully weigh options, risks, and opportunities is a muscle that needs to be flexed and refined.

Regardless of which techniques you choose and how you represent your leadership style, it’s also important to gain buy-in from your whole team and make sure you’ve set up clear processes that you can replicate efficiently in the future.

Decision-making techniques, styles, and approaches

Knowing your decision-making style doesn’t preclude you from making informed decisions. While we all have a level of personal and professional intuition to trust, effective decision-making is backed up by analysis, research, and fact. A PwC survey of senior executives found that data-driven organizations are three times more likely to see improvements in decision-making than those who rely less on data.

There are countless decision-making models that drive informed choices, and finding the right technique comes down to your team makeup and your leadership style. Many teams prefer a SWOT analysis, which outlines the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats of the decision to accurately gauge benefits and risks.

Decision-making techniques, styles, and approaches

Knowing your decision-making style doesn’t preclude you from making informed decisions. While we all have a level of personal and professional intuition to trust, effective decision-making is backed up by analysis, research, and fact. A PwC survey of senior executives found that data-driven organizations are three times more likely to see improvements in decision-making than those who rely less on data.

There are countless decision-making models that drive informed choices, and finding the right technique comes down to your team makeup and your leadership style. Many teams prefer a SWOT analysis, which outlines the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats of the decision to accurately gauge benefits and risks.

The four types of decision-making

When it comes to knowing where to begin in your decision-making process, it’s helpful to understand the four types of decision-making and lean into the one that feels most natural and fits the situation at hand. The four types include:

1. Autocratic: the leader takes control and makes the decisions. Little or no discussion is involved in the decision-making process.
2. Consensus: the leader remains hands-off and lets the team come to a group consensus where everyone must agree. The group decides unanimously based on their own input and expertise.
3. Democratic: the leader steps back from the decision and lets the group vote on a decision where the majority leads. Not everyone will agree, but group members agree to comply with the decision.
4. Consultative: the leader takes advice and opinions from the group and uses that to make a final decision. The leader may take advice or suggestions from the group.

Choosing your decision-making process can be obvious, like an autocratic decision to determine the marketing budget for the year. But when it comes to decisions that make an impact on either the day-to-day or long-term work of our team, you’ll want more input from them.

Planning an event for a client with a tight deadline and budget, for example, may require some insight from your group that you may not have. You’ll want to make a consensus or consultative approach there so the group expertise is implemented into the final decision and everyone feels comfortable with the work they have to do to get there.

Maybe your team wants to settle on a specific day of each week to be a designated “meeting-free” day. Your team can debate and collaborate to come to a democratic decision together and comply with it moving forward.

Step 1: Define your project idea

You should first identify the project to test. A brainstorming template can help generate ideas, while a product launch template can help define the need and the market. 

It’s important to ask the following questions: What problems will this project solve, and for whom? The product manager should have the required market knowledge to answer these questions.

Step 2: Set your success criteria

After defining the project, decide on the benchmarks to measure the success or failure of the project. If the project is for a client, consult them about how they define success. If not, conduct the necessary research to determine success criteria.

Step 3: List the resources you will need

Build an exhaustive list of tangible and intangible resources the team will need to execute the project. Resources include material goods, technology, tools, and human capital.

Step 4: Determine your timeline

Create a product roadmap that overviews the timeline for the proof of concept from ideation to development. For example, will there be a full launch from the beginning, or will it start small and then scale? If the latter, how quickly will it scale? These details provide an idea of the pace of the project.

Step 5: Develop and test your prototype

Once you have decided on the project scope, you can develop and test your prototype with the target audience. Pay attention to how it addresses their pain points. It may help to bring in other teams and stakeholders to get a fresh perspective. Gather all feedback, both positive and negative.

Step 6: Review and refine

After gathering feedback, evaluate how the prototype performed against the predefined success criteria. Conduct a competitive analysis to evaluate its performance against similar solutions. Use the information from this step to improve on areas that fall short of success.

Step 7: Present your POC

Present your idea to stakeholders for development approval. Provide a clear model of how the idea works—visuals and illustrations can be helpful. Emphasize how it addresses pain points and meets the audience's needs. If the proof of concept meets the success criteria, approval is likely.

Steps you should take in the decision-making process

The first step you need to take when making a decision is identifying the problem your team needs to solve. Create a Confluence page where you can visualize the problem and who is responsible for overcoming it. Having the problem clearly spelled out will help ensure everyone understands what decision they need to make and why. What is the impact of the problem? What are your goals that will confirm your solution is a success?

Then, break down the issue. Gather information and data that defines what has caused the problem or is preventing a solution. This can include market research, company data, personal insights, and trending news. Build a table that outlines the risks and benefits of potential solutions to prepare your team ahead of time.

Encourage your team to review that outline and provide feedback early on, so they can identify any missing gaps or obstacles before you flesh out the problem. They may also be able to contribute to your research and provide further insights you didn’t consider.

Evaluate your team’s options and use a framework to make a decision. You may need a group effort or further evaluation, which is where your framework comes into play. You may find that the original framework you proposed — like a SWOT analysis – isn’t thorough enough for the solution you’ll need. Encourage your team to propose the right framework that will help with transparency in the decision and will also make their workload clear.

Once you’ve made the decision, work through project management tools like Trello or Jira Work Management to implement it, test it, and monitor it. Continue to document your progress along the way in Confluence so you can refer to it in the future to replicate or iterate your performance.

Popular decision-making frameworks

DACI: Use this framework to work with a team to come to group decisions together, identifying roles within the process including Driver, Approver, Contributors, and Informed individuals. Use data and background knowledge to help support the decision.

Problem framing: Work with your team to identify problem statements that outline one concise solution to the problem in a digestible and collaborative manner. This helps focus on understanding and defining the problem while you align your team on approach. Then you can assemble a select group of stakeholders to settle on the right decision.

Trade-offs: Sometimes making the right decision means making compromises. What will you trade-off for the benefit of the right decision? Work with your team to identify constraints, blockers, and priorities before you kick off the project so you come prepared with decisions before the obstacles happen.

OKRs: Make your decisions with an objective in mind. OKRs are designed for continuous growth and can function as a “north star” that keeps you on course as you make individual decisions during a project.

Decision-making in Confluence

Regardless of which model you pick, your team can work together to both build and document your decision-making framework within Confluence. We have templates for DACI, SWOT analysis, a design decision template, a voting table, and more

Decision-making techniques, styles, and approaches

Knowing your decision-making style doesn’t preclude you from making informed decisions. While we all have a level of personal and professional intuition to trust, effective decision-making is backed up by analysis, research, and fact. A PwC survey of senior executives found that data-driven organizations are three times more likely to see improvements in decision-making than those who rely less on data.

There are countless decision-making models that drive informed choices, and finding the right technique comes down to your team makeup and your leadership style. Many teams prefer a SWOT analysis, which outlines the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats of the decision to accurately gauge benefits and risks.

Popular decision-making frameworks

DACI: Use this framework to work with a team to come to group decisions together, identifying roles within the process including Driver, Approver, Contributors, and Informed individuals. Use data and background knowledge to help support the decision.

Problem framing: Work with your team to identify problem statements that outline one concise solution to the problem in a digestible and collaborative manner. This helps focus on understanding and defining the problem while you align your team on approach. Then you can assemble a select group of stakeholders to settle on the right decision.

Trade-offs: Sometimes making the right decision means making compromises. What will you trade-off for the benefit of the right decision? Work with your team to identify constraints, blockers, and priorities before you kick off the project so you come prepared with decisions before the obstacles happen.

OKRs: Make your decisions with an objective in mind. OKRs are designed for continuous growth and can function as a “north star” that keeps you on course as you make individual decisions during a project.

Decision-making in Confluence

Regardless of which model you pick, your team can work together to both build and document your decision-making framework within Confluence. We have templates for DACI, SWOT analysis, a design decision template, a voting table, and more

Decision-making in Confluence

Regardless of which model you pick, your team can work together to both build and document your decision-making framework within Confluence. We have templates for DACI, SWOT analysis, a design decision template, a voting table, and more