“We need more data before we can decide.” Fair enough, but what data? And what exactly are we waiting to find out?
I have seen organisations spend an extraordinary amount of time and resources analysing problems that everybody already knows are costing money for the company. Another report is commissioned or meetings are arranged, and sometimes they even get a consultant to study the situation.
Meanwhile, the problem gnaws on the profits quite happily.
Of course, acting without enough information can be expensive too. The trick is knowing the difference between useful investigation and simply postponing a decision.
What would the next piece of evidence change?
Suppose deliveries are consistently late.
It’s the all-too-common blame-game where the management suspects production capacity, operations blame scheduling, purchasing surely points to material shortages, and finally, the sales of course claim that the customers keep changing their orders.
Everybody may have a piece of the truth, and we could spend months investigating every possible cause. Or we could start with a rather more practical question. What do we need to establish before deciding what to do next?
Perhaps the delivery records already show that most delays occur before production even starts. That would make a substantial investment in additional production capacity a rather questionable first move. Perhaps the records show something else entirely.
Either way, we have learned something that affects the decision. That too, is useful evidence. Another report confirming that deliveries are late? Yes, we knew that already.
Sometimes you know enough to try something
Not every decision needs the same degree of certainty.
Changing the sequence of a handover for two weeks is not the same as buying a new production line. One is relatively easy to reverse and the other can tie up money and resources for years. The consequences of being wrong matter. So does the cost of waiting.
If a small, controlled change can test an explanation without creating unacceptable risk, why insist on knowing everything first? We can agree what we expect to happen, make the change, observe the result and decide whether to continue, adjust or stop. That is not guessing but learning deliberately.
But if the decision involves a major investment, significant safety risks or commitments that are difficult to reverse, we had better understand the important uncertainties before proceeding. The question is no longer whether we have enough data in general. It is whether we have enough reliable evidence for this particular decision.
This is where decision-making facilitation earns its keep
There is a difference between telling people what the answer is and helping them work out what they actually know.
When I facilitate this kind of work, I am not there to collect endless explanations or decide on management's behalf.
I want the people who understand the business to examine the situation together. What do we know? What are we assuming? Where do the explanations disagree? What evidence would make us change our minds? And, importantly, what can we reasonably do next? I have an endless bank of questions, for sure.
Sometimes the answer is another investigation. Sometimes it is a small experiment. Sometimes the evidence is already sufficient, and the real obstacle is that nobody wants to make the decision. That last obstacle is not particularly unusual.
Good facilitation should make these distinctions visible, not bury them under another presentation. It means that professional facilitation can help organisation make better decisions that are rooted in knowledge and experience.
My Where's the Beef? logic works in both directions
The Where's the Beef? approach (inspired by Theory of Change) that I have developed, is useful when something is going or is about to go wrong. We can follow the connections from the observed problem through its possible causes, the changes needed, the actions people must take and the results we expect.
But this technique is just as useful when nothing is particularly wrong. Suppose a company wants to double its capacity, develop a new service, be better at customer service or shorten its order-to-delivery time. We can begin with the desired result and work backwards.
What would have to change to make that result possible? What would people need to do differently? Which assumptions need testing? What resources or decisions are required? And what would tell us that the change is actually working?
In one direction, we are investigating what prevents a satisfactory result. In the other, we are working out what will make a better result possible. The same discipline applies to both.
The work can continue into action planning, responsibilities, sequencing and meaningful measures of progress. Or it can stop earlier if we have already established enough to make the next decision.
There is no prize for making a straightforward problem unnecessarily complicated. No heroics there.
The next useful move
One thing I particularly like about this approach of decision making and problem-solving is that it changes the conversation.
Instead of asking for more analysis almost automatically, people begin asking what uncertainty actually matters. Instead of defending their favourite explanation, they look for evidence that might prove it wrong. And instead of waiting for a perfect answer, they can agree on a sensible next step and learn from what happens.
That is also a change in how people work together. Over time, they become better at examining problems, developing improvements and making decisions without somebody having to lead them through every question.
Which, to me, is one of the most valuable results of good management facilitation. We do not need to know everything before we act.
We need to know enough to make the next move worthwhile, and enough to recognise whether it worked.
If your business is stuck between another round of analysis and a decision nobody quite wants to make, perhaps we should look at what is actually missing.
I can help facilitate that discussion, using Where's the Beef? technique to work through either a problem that needs solving or an improvement you want to achieve. There is also an Interactive service at Balete Works for working through the method in a structured way.
Send me a message here on LinkedIn, or have a look at www.baleteworks.com.
We can start with an initial conversation. No strings attached