07/10/2020

Reset Decision-making in Your Organization

The time for this is now

While we may be living in unprecedented times, past events provide insights and practices as COVID-19 (coronavirus) pandemic recovery plans are developed. Consider these five elements of organizational decision-making: information gathering; strategy; combining long-term thinking with short-term actions; clear communication internally and externally; and a review of policies and processes to ensure the organization’s preparedness for future crises.

Information gathering

The flow of high-quality information is more important than ever. A United States military framework for thinking about the external environment that has gained traction in the business world is VUCA: Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity, and Ambiguity.

While these words seem similar in many respects, a key point of VUCA is that each of these terms describes a different situation that requires a specific response. Nathan Bennett, a professor with the Robinson College of Business at Georgia State University, and G. James Lemoine, an assistant professor in the Organization and Human Resources Department of the School of Management at the University at Buffalo, have written extensively on VUCA, and argue, “If VUCA is seen as general, unavoidable, and unsolvable, leaders will take no action and fail to solve an actual problem.” Thus, diagnosis of the situation is a prerequisite to crafting a response.

Please select this link to read the complete article from Harvard Business School Working Knowledge.