What type of decision can you afford to make?
What type of decision can you afford to make?
When I train leaders in participatory practice, this is a question I often ask when concerns about “how long this participatory stuff takes” comes up.
The truth is that all decisions cost something.
And my view is that all decisions are ultimately expensive.
They require time, energy, attention, and often wading through discomfort or navigating conflict – whether they have been made autocratically or in a participative way.
Participative processes are upfront about what the decision costs. We invest in making the decision in a participative way first so the outcome that follows is more meaningful, efficient, and effective.
When we defer the bill, we deal with challenges such as:
- Decisions never getting off the ground
- Unexpected excuses or challenges that undermine the original decision
- Ruminating on the original decision and attempts to revisit it, go back to the drawing board
- Tension or conflict between collaborators or team members
- Duplication of work as people might branch off to do it “their way”
- Disengagement – no energy to carry out the decision
- Going slow, frequent revision of project timelines
- Budget issues due to above challenges
Often the signs these challenges are starting to bubble away go ignored until they have built up significantly and are therefore quite difficult to address – costing us even more time, energy, attention, conflict than we would have dealt with “upfront”.
However, the view that participative work takes a lot of time and energy and therefore can be impractical has wisdom. It can indeed be difficult to do participative work well within time constraints.
And there is also an emotional burden with participative work. Part of the energy it takes is that it is hard and sometimes risky to voice our own views and to engage with different views. It takes courage and consideration on our part.
Sometimes it is easier to give up our participation and let someone else make a decision – it can even be a relief. Do you recognise this?
And for leaders, it can feel relieving when people trust us and give us their power so we can just decide something and move forward. Do you recognise this as well?
The key for me is conscious choice and clarity:
How are we deciding? What kind of decision can we afford right now? Has this been named for the group?
There is nuance here. I personally find a participative decision can be possible in most situations, even done quickly, and even if it does not address everything. Your facilitation skills here are important (more on how to develop these below), as is consciously naming the time constraint and level of depth you are likely to achieve e.g. “we don’t have much time, let’s hear views on the decision within 5 minutes, and then I will use the insight to make a call. We won’t hear everything – so true participation may feel limited but it’s the best we can do within our time constraint.”
There’s no one-size-fits-all.
Some situations do ultimately call for quick, top-down decisions (by leaders using their power in appropriate ways – but more thoughts on that another time).
However, if we make an autocratic style decision, whether or not it’s justified due to the situation, we can expect resistance as a normal reaction. It is always worth being aware this resistance is likely to play out if we are autocratic, and having a plan for how we will acknowledge and navigate it skilfully and consciously with others.
Reflection questions:
- When have you made a decision, only to see the above challenges (or other ones not listed) play out? What was the outcome overall?
- In what situations are more autocratic style decisions justified in leadership? How would you deal with the inevitable and normal resistance behaviour that follows?
- In what situations might you create space and time for more participative ways of working? What skills or tools can you incorporate into your leadership to do this skilfully, even when time is constrained?
Do you want to increase your skill in participative leadership, facilitation or and practice?
Then lets talk! I’m guiding culture change at the University through leadership training – free for all schools and staff groups.
Feel free to email me for a conversation about how I might support: fpagni@ed.ac.uk
