Last night I had a beer and a chat with a man who is is wise beyond his years. He shared with me some great ideas about decision making in organizational environments, such as charities, social enterprises, businesses, the government, the non-government, and neighbourhoods. My friend argued that there are four kinds of decisions that we make:
- The ones that the leader/boss makes with no input. “Alright, sailors, I burned our ships so that you will feel a great sense of commitment to this land and, most importantly, to me, Hernan Cortes, and not that jerk Governor of Cuba!”
- The ones that the leader/boss makes with consultative input to/from a team. “Hey, Vancouver, we’ve developed a plan to put bike lanes everywhere. Just a heads-up. Drive carefully!”
- The ones that the team/people make with consultative input to/from the leader. “Hey, boss. Because I’m a Millennial and I like to customize things, I created my own performance review based on my specific skills and interests – it just feels more me, you know? Would you have some time to review it before we use it to measure my awesomeness?”
- The ones that the team/people make with no input. “Dear CEO of our company, I just averted a potentially horrendous brand-epic-failure on Twitter by engaging the customer immediately and solving their problem right away; this involved giving them a free service/product that we make/provide.”
The idea here is that the most effective decisions for a thriving community come from the fourth point – when in possession of a strong vision, a clear set of principles, and a wicked-awesome plan, everybody in a community knows what to do and work/business/advocacy/change/governance happens as efficiently as it does strategically as it does quickly.
And then there’s the terrible state of our poor little planet and the important decisions that need to be made in order to sustain not lose half of the Earth’s population in a tsunami-nuclear-firestorm-hurricane-drought-war.
After chatting with my friend I came home and watched the video below, which was shared by my awesome sister.
I don’t know about you, but the idea of our global team making most of the decisions seems like the best solution for the many complex problems that lie before us. And, yes, I realize the incredibly/ridiculously complicated nature of doing this. And I also recognize that it’s time to try something new and ridiculous. Because the boring old stuff ain’t working.