Utilizing Technology to Prioritize Steps to Success.

There you are, driving along the freeway. Not a care in the world. You know exactly where you're going. Just then, with one wrong exit, you're hopelessly lost. No need to panic. You simply flip on your car's electronic mapping device, punch in your destination and voila, directions appear. You're back in the driver's seat, not only sure of where you're going, but which way to turn at every intersection along the way.

Fortunately, similar technology exists to help business executives follow a road map in identifying and prioritizing implementable decisions and actions. One aspect of this important new technology is its forced-decision feature that provides the ability to help management understand the relative significance of issues. Another is its ability to map out the corresponding decision and communication process required for implementation. The combination of these two technologies represents a critical advance in management know-how. For the first time, management has access to an effective and systematic method for identifying and prioritizing key issues, and then, merging and managing the processes and the activities needed to address them.

The Old Way

Modem management philosophy emphasizes the importance of group participation in the decision-making process. Traditionally, however, this process is time consuming. With so many different people, ideas and concepts of what needs to be decided, you can quickly get into analysis paralysis. Particularly when there are a lot of issues, the process becomes unwieldy. So you might start out with a group process, but ultimately upper management gets inpatient and overrides the group process to make a decision unilaterally. What happens? The group members think their opinions are no longer valued, and their cooperation and enthusiasm are lost.

Alternatively with the group process, you could have a couple of hot wires or really resistive people. Either way, that can become the thorn in one's side so that when a decision is reached, the group decides it's not the right one after all. Their motivation then is to see the decision fail, and you have lost any real commitment to its execution.

What's left? The autocratic approach that often fails because the decision-maker may not know all the relevant information. It's just not realistic to think any one individual could consider all the consequences and factors involved in every decision.

The biggest problem, however, with the conventional way of making decisions is the process may depend on perception, not fact. What often happens is that you might use a very sophisticated model to make a decision, but if the original perceptions used to make decisions were invalid, the consequence is inappropriate. Also; there is no assurance the right questions were ever asked or answered.

The Decision-Making Process

In order to improve the ability to identify priorities and implement them, it's important to identify the four fundamental processes that go into decision-making.

1.Identify the knowledgeable and impacted participants in any decision-making process.

2. Separate perception from fact.

3. Establish a method for ranking priorities where there are generally multiple and simultaneous alternatives.

4. Manage the change process.

Unfortunately, the first two are generally skipped, and management decisions begin with the third. This process is complex and often involves a broad spectrum of people who might have the appropriate knowledge, but don't understand the process or aren't committed to it.

Technology at Work

The newest decision-making technology enables participants to identify the issues and rank their significance. It also provides an "organizational process mapping" to help individuals involved in the decision-making process merge and manage the processes and activities needed to address them.

First, information from an organization is captured using a data collection instrument to identify the issues and the people who are likely to be OOimpacted by or involved in decisions around those issues. Each of these individuals is then asked to fill out a data question form on which they check off the people with whom they interact, they identify the frequency of the interaction, the important of what's being attached to it, the impact that it has on decisions, etc. This information is processed by computer and solutions and resolutions suggested.

This technology works regardless of the size, type or organization of a company. A multi-national high technology company recently wanted to move from thinking of themselves as primarily a manufacturer of technology intensive equipment to a technology and knowledge asset based enterprise, i.e., a fundamental shift in thinking within the organization. First, the decision-making technology of CoNexus software was used to bring the group to an understanding of the critical elements, ones that needed immediate attention. This process accomplished in a matter of days instead of months.

Then, a second technology, Blue Marble's EnCompass was used to create a map for merging and managing the processes and activities needed to address these issues. Progress could not only be charted all along the way, but projected five years into the future as well to make sure this company was on, and stayed on, the right track. With this technology, the company was able to attain an important, multinational strategy needed to encompass and integrate its enormous corporate growth over the last four years. The management team was also able to identify and institutionalize vital knowledge within the organization so that even with personnel turnover the knowledge wasn't lost.

An East Coast-based specialty food company used the same technology to seamlessly integrate a recent acquisition into their core business. A large Midwest-based chemical products company had a serious problem in translating successful research results into new products. Needing to understand how the organization's structure could link the research and development side of the business with business planning and exploration, this technology mapped the process.

The Future

In education, institutions, government, manufacturing, construction, retail and service companies, technology is being used to manage knowledge better. Along with established companies, it is also helpful in the conceptual phase of a new venture. In addition to reducing the development cycle, this technology helps avoid costly mistakes and having to play catch-up. As more and more individuals and management teams use decision-making technology that merges the human spirit and intelligence, the more effective companies will be in setting and implementing priorities.

Michael Mann is a certified management consultant (CMC) and a member of the Institute of Management Consultants (imcusa.org). He is also Chairman and CEO of The Blue Marble Companies - an integrated group of organizations that supply consulting services and unique technology products to business. For more information, visit the company Web site at (www.bluemarblecorp.com)