5 Decision Making Tips for New Managers

Making the Right Decision — Decision Making Tips for New Managers
When you become a new manager, it can be tempting to make some immediate and bold decisions to prove your worth.  But we know from decades of decision making tips for new managers that new supervisors are at high risk of misjudging strategic priorities, situations, processes, people, and workplace politics if they make decisions too quickly.

The best new leaders resist the urge to act quickly and focus on listening, observing, and learning for at least the first 30-90 days.

Sure, there may be simple choices to be made or a crisis that needs to be solved immediately, but many decisions for new leaders can be complex, involve multiple stakeholders, and have far-reaching implications.  New manager training participants tell us that they seldom feel confident predicting which option will be the best in the end.

5 Decision Making Tips for New Managers
Once you know that you have a decision to make, here are some decision making tips for new managers from a recent decision making training workshop that can help :

1. Agree Upon the Levels of Importance, Urgency, and Risk
   Before gathering information and allocating resources, the most effective leaders agree upon the levels of importance, urgency, and risk.

   They understand the impact of the decision upon their key stakeholders; they know how high a priority it is in the grand scheme of things; they identify the key risks; and they define the required time parameters.

2. Define Your Decision Making Criteria
   Once the big picture is clear, it is time to identify and prioritize all of the different factors that you and your team must take into account. Your decision making criteria should be measurable and relevant to your strategy, culture, team and the scope of the problem you are trying to solve.

   Typical decision making criteria include factors such as ability to implement, financial, scalability, time, quality, flexibility, risk, culture and people implications, customer impact, competition, and change readiness.

3. Gather Relevant Information
   Once your decision making criteria is clear, it the responsibility of new managers to ensure that the information required to make an informed, timely, and effective decision is gathered. Use whatever means you have at your disposal — knowledgeable colleagues, relevant reports, past experience, and future trends.

   Understand that during a current state analysis you are unlikely to be able to pull together all the data that would highlight a single path to take.  Focus on narrowing the choices by eliminating some that are clearly wrong and make informed strategic, cultural and people assumptions to overcome the common barrier of unclear information.

   Then document the most important information you are missing so you know where you stand.

4. Identify Viable Alternatives and Consequences
   Help your team to identify at least three or four realistic alternatives. For each alternative identify the pros, the cons, the uncertainties and the potential consequences.  Generating alternatives may sound like it will slow you down, but expanding your choices forces your team to innovate and look at the problem from different perspectives.

   Of all the decision making tips for new managers, presenting viable alternatives and consequences seems to ease the pain and difficulty of choosing the best path.

5. Be Decisive
   Once you’ve evaluated the viable options, the next step is to make your decision. Yes, take some time to consider all options.  But then don’t postpone your decision too long.

   Remember, there is rarely a “perfect” answer for complex decisions. You need to make the best decisions with the information available and begin to move in the chosen direction.

   Just make sure you have a process in place to track progress and adjust as needed.

The Bottom Line
As a new manager, you have a lot invested in you and your team making the best decisions.  You want your team to trust your leadership from the get-go.  You can certainly ask for and consider their input. In the end, however, the decision is up to you.

To learn more about how to create the environment for good decision making, download 3 Proven Steps to Set Your Team Up to Make Better Decisions