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Improve Decision Buy-In - Making Decisions Reality At Work · Enhance.training

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Making decisions reality at work or getting a decision implemented by others to achieve a desired result is far harder than making the decision itself.
• 0:10
  SPEAKER_00: Getting others to understand, accept, and work to implement decisions, even when they don't like them, is a very valuable skill.
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_00: Keep improving decision-buying skills and you become more and more effective at work, particularly as a manager of others.
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_00: There are so many different levels of decision to make.
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_00: Hard decisions that conflict with your values, complex decisions that impact many people in the organization, and difficult decisions choosing between multiple bad options.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_00: You can't approach implementing each of these types of decisions in the same way and expect to get a good result.
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_00: Flexibility of approach is critical to successfully implement decisions.
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_00: To help you improve decision buy-in when dealing with the tougher decisions to implement within your business, I am sharing four useful decision-making routes to employ with teams, five steps to plan how to improve decision buying commitment, and third, the recode decision buying communication model, which will help you persuade others.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_00: Implementing decisions is far harder than making decisions.
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_00: The better you get at making decisions reality at work, the more valuable you'll become in your role.
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_00: Each section will help you become more persuasive at work.
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_00: My name is Jess Coles, and if you're new here, Enhance.training shares people management expertise, resources, and courses teaching you how to build high-performing teams.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_00: I've included in the description a link to more detail on the Recode decision buy-in model and how to use it.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_00: Do take a look at this.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_00: The more complex the decision being made, and the larger the impact on colleagues and the company, the more decision buy-in you'll need from a greater range of people to enable you or others to implement that decision.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_00: Different stakeholders to the decision often include, if firstly your boss and other managers, secondly, your team, third, peers and colleagues, and then fourth, other stakeholders within the business as well as customers and suppliers.
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_00: Making the decision is nearly always quicker than implementing a decision.
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_00: When deciding on the approach to use to make the decision, focus on what approach will be quickest to achieve the desired results, rather than what would be quickest for the decision-making element.
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_00: What makes for a quick decision can easily result in a long or unsuccessful implementation.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_00: When you manage a team, knowing four useful decision-making routes for teams and how best to use them is really useful.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_00: Managers need their teams to implement decisions quickly and do a good job of making the decision reality at work.
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_00: The four decision-making routes managers should use with teams are firstly unilateral.
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_00: The decision is taken by yourself without input from others.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_00: Secondly, consult and decide.
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_00: You consult others for input and then make the decision yourself.
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_00: And third, build consensus.
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_00: You ask the group to be involved in the decision-making process, coaching them and inputting yourself until a majority of the group have agreed.
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_00: And fourth, unanimous, where everyone agrees with the decision.
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_00: None of these approaches are right or wrong.
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_00: For a given situation and a given decision, one approach is likely to be get a much better result than the others.
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_00: Managers use all of these approaches, though most managers will favour one or two approaches.
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_00: A couple of examples to illustrate where each should be used.
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_00: The unilateral approach is best when a decision is needed quickly, or the subject is sensitive or controversial, or where there is likely to be a wide range of opinions and views within the team.
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_00: It is better to use this approach when barriers to implementation are low.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_00: The consult and decide approach is useful for decisions that need some buy-in to implement, that have a relatively low impact on the team, maybe are slightly controversial or be difficult to build a consensus within the team.
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_00: Building consensus is good for decisions that have a high impact on the team, or need a lot of work from the team to implement, or they can be really good to use to develop team members' decision-making skills.
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_00: Decide if you'll use part or all of the team during this decision-making process.
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_00: And finally, unanimous decision making.
• 4:37
  SPEAKER_00: I don't see this approach used that often.
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_00: There is a danger of reaching the lowest common denominator rather than a good decision with this option.
• 4:45
  SPEAKER_00: When you need everyone's buy-in to a decision, unanimous decision making is obviously very useful.
• 4:51
  SPEAKER_00: Experiment with using each type.
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_00: The skills to focus on building are firstly how to use each decision-making process well, and secondly to know which route to use for which types of decisions and in what situations.
• 5:05
  SPEAKER_00: In general, the bigger the impact and the more you rely on the involvement of others to implement a decision, the more inclusive I would be, to speed up and to improve the quality of the implementation of the decision.
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_00: Your team committing to implementing a decision is one barrier.
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_00: For more complex or widely impacting decisions, such as changing core processes or halting production of a popular but low margin product, there are usually many other barriers within a company to implementing the decision.
• 5:36
  SPEAKER_00: I use five steps to plan how to improve decision buying commitment.
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_00: To make a decision reality within a business, the people impacted by the decision need at least to accept the decision and actively help implement the change.
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_00: Most people would be happy to save time and put in some effort to implement it.
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_00: What if one person lost influence as a result of the proposed changes?
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_00: They might try to block the change or drag their feet making the change difficult.
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_00: What if they were influential in the business?
• 6:13
  SPEAKER_00: The decision may never get implemented.
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_00: In my experience, when decisions are in the best interests of the company overall or in the best interests of the team, providing you communicate this well, most people will accept the decision.
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_00: Once you have a critical number of people accepting the decision, you can usually get it implemented fairly well.
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_00: From experience, to gain buy-in for difficult decisions requires a tailored approach for each party.
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_00: The more influence a person has on implementing the decision, the more time you'll need to spend persuading them and addressing their concerns.
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_00: The steps I go through to prepare for these conversations are firstly to work out who the influential people impacted are.
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_00: People are influential through their position, through social and professional standings, through networks, etc.
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_00: Secondly, I understand what pressures, desires, and objections each person is likely to have.
• 7:10
  SPEAKER_00: Third, I work out how big the impact is on them, of the change that the decision will create, and what we can do to mitigate this as much as possible.
• 7:19
  SPEAKER_00: Make the barrier to them committing to help implement as low as possible.
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_00: Fourth, go through the benefits of implementing the decision to them personally, either directly or indirectly.
• 7:30
  SPEAKER_00: Do your best to make these more desirable than the pain they will go through.
• 7:35
  SPEAKER_00: And fifth, lastly, work out what is the ideal and the minimum level of support from them to ensure a reasonable result when making the decision a reality.
• 7:45
  SPEAKER_00: When you've worked through each of these steps, you should have a strong argument to take to them, or at least as strong as you can make it.
• 7:52
  SPEAKER_00: If the decision is in the best interests of the company or group, I found using this approach can usually persuade even those very negatively affected to support implementing the decision or at least not actively opposing it.
• 8:07
  SPEAKER_00: Lastly, how you communicate a decision or recommendation is really important.
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_00: I use the Recode decision buy-in communication model, which uses five steps to provide the information in a logical order to help persuade the other party as quickly as possible.
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_00: Touching on each briefly.
• 8:25
  SPEAKER_00: Firstly, communicate the recommendation or decision that you are seeking.
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_00: Use a top-down communication approach so they quickly understand what you're asking for.
• 8:35
  SPEAKER_00: Secondly, provide the context.
• 8:44
  SPEAKER_00: Thirdly, summarise the options that you have considered when reaching your recommendation.
• 8:49
  SPEAKER_00: Fourth, explain the data, insights and other supporting information that led to your recommendation.
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_00: And fifth, summarise how you evaluated the options.
• 9:00
  SPEAKER_00: What criteria did you use?
• 9:02
  SPEAKER_00: What assumptions did you make?
• 9:04
  SPEAKER_00: And why is a recommendation the best outcome for the situation and the business?
• 9:09
  SPEAKER_00: I often find that you don't need to go through all the steps before the other party realizes that you've really thought it through and the business case will be compelling.
• 9:17
  SPEAKER_00: They often agree to what you ask well before finishing the five steps.
• 9:21
  SPEAKER_00: Other times you might need to dive into a detail to answer questions or overcome objections.
• 9:27
  SPEAKER_00: Be ready for both.
• 9:29
  SPEAKER_00: To learn more about the Recode model, I've included a link in the description to a download with a lot more detail on how to use the Recode model.
• 9:37
  SPEAKER_00: Another podcast that you'll find very useful is how to execute and make things happen.
• 9:45
  SPEAKER_00: I'll include links in the description to this.
• 9:48
  SPEAKER_00: So, in summary, implementing decisions is far harder than making decisions.
• 9:54
  SPEAKER_00: The better you get at making decisions reality at work, the more valuable you'll become in your role.
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_00: Use what we have gone through today to build your persuasion skills and to use approaches to improve decision buy-in.
• 10:07
  SPEAKER_00: To improve decision buy-in, we have gone through, firstly, four useful decision-making routes to employ with teams, secondly, five steps to plan how to improve decision buy-in commitment, and third, the Recode Decision Bay-in communication model.
• 10:23
  SPEAKER_00: Getting others to take the action you need is a very valuable skill, particularly as a manager.
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_00: Practice using the techniques we've been through, and it won't be long before you see improved results.training and I'll get back to you.
• 10:45
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks very much for listening, and I look forward to speaking to you again soon.