Structuring Meetings For Better Decision Making

Five frogs were on a log. Four decided to jump off. How many were left?

The answer is five because deciding to do something and actually doing it are different. It’s not just deciding fast. It’s then executing it and moving fast. 

Executives spend 40 percent of their time making decisions, and 60 percent of them feel that time is poorly used, says Leigh Weiss, senior expert at McKinsey & Co. Much of their decision-making is done in meetings, and those meetings aren’t structured in ways that lead to good decisions, she says. Here is how to plan an effective meeting for better decision making.

Decision Making Challenges

One challenge companies face is who to include in the decision-making meeting. While some companies tend to limit attendance at meetings to decision-makers, often, companies save time when they include those who must execute the decision from the beginning. Those implementing the decision then have all the information they need to move forward. If they aren’t included, they must ask questions before they can act, which slows down the action, says Aaron De Smet, senior partner at McKinsey.

How Roles Impact Better Decision Making

Having a large group present when technology companies or consulting firms make a decision can be efficient as long as each person in the room understands their role. The four roles found at a good decision-making meeting are decision-makers, advisers, recommenders, and the execution team. At the beginning of the meeting, the leader might say that Sue and Bob will decide, but would like advice from Ally, John, and Jamal, recommendations from Paul and Bill, and that Jorge and Camille will be responsible for executing the decision. 

The leader also will structure the meeting toward achieving a good decision. For example, the leader may have a group report on the options, pros and cons, recommendations, and implications. The leader also chooses who to include in the meeting based upon who can contribute to the debate or to executing the decision. 

“The No. 1 predictor of fast, high-quality decisions for big-bet, important decisions that organizations make is the quality of the debate that goes into it, ” Weiss says.

Amazon’s Memo Policy For Productive Decision-Making Meetings

To ensure good debate and good decisions come out of its meetings, Amazon has adopted a policy that the presenting team writes a six-page narrative memo before the meeting. The memo often begins with a proposal and discusses why the team proposes a particular action, providing specific data. The memo will then list what type of decision or feedback the team requests.  

The memo is sent out via a document-sharing program. Participants spend the first 20 minutes of the 60-minute meeting typing comments and questions into the memo, often receiving immediate typed answers from the presentation team. During the remaining 40 minutes, participants have a quality discussion on the questions, comments, and issues raised in the document. At the end of the hour, the team has the decision or feedback it requested.

One thing to avoid is someone new to the process walking participants through the memo at the beginning of the meeting. The purpose of the meeting is to make a decision or provide feedback, and all the time should be spent on that, say Colin Bryar and Bill Carr, authors of the book, Working Backwards: Insights, Stories, and Secrets from Inside Amazon.  

The Right Vehicle For Generating Quality Discussions

The memo idea originated with CEO Jeff Bezos. As Amazon grew from a startup into a large company, Bezos realized that the typical meeting, in which teams presented PowerPoints, resulted in poor decisions. It also resulted in the senior team members not being very involved in all aspects of the business. Bezos realized that a PowerPoint, which tends to have the punchline at the end, was not the right vehicle to generate quality discussions and decision-making. He came up with the idea of memos, at first setting the length at four pages. Later, Bezos established six pages as the length because that presents roughly the amount of information that can be discussed at a one-hour meeting.

Memos are written around all sorts of decisions — operating plans, annual reviews, new product decisions. When relevant, each memo will include any tenets behind any decision. Tenets are fundamental issues the company has previously agreed that the company should do. They are values statements. Amazon includes these tenets in the memos to prevent re-litigating them at each meeting and to focus people around the values. New hires will read the archived memos as part of the onboarding process, and if they accidentally bring up doing something different from the tenets during the meeting, the group will refer them to previous memos. 

The memo strategy has resulted in better decisions for Amazon. Because senior management can read the documents for meetings they didn’t attend, they remain fully informed about each action, Brayer and Carr said.

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