Whether your company uses a command-and-control or consensus-building style of decision-making, you may be working with a team. Making decisions as a working group or team strengthens the commitment to implementation and helps bring all the issues to the table for consideration. In deciding who you’ll involve in decision-making, consider factors such as the following:
Who has experience or expertise that could bring value to the team? Bring in expertise from across functions within the organization. Also consider involving customers who add value through their needs and perspectives and through relationships.
Who will be impacted by the decision? Build in viewpoints from those impacted by the decision, whether the impact is anticipated to be positive or negative. This could mean adding your best customers to the team.
Who will be responsible for implementing the decision? Involving in the planning process those who will be implementing the decision is just plain smart. By addressing operational considerations in the beginning (these considerations all too frequently get left out of the early decision-making discussion), you can make implementation go much more smoothly.
If, on the other hand, you ignore the valuable experience and knowledge that the people implementing the decision have, you risk creating resistance and extra cost.
Engaging and designing the solutions together as an interdisciplinary team draws on the brain trust within the company and offers a better chance to foresee what may not go according to plan. In short, it helps you troubleshoot. It also helps you strengthen internal relationships. Keeping people — especially those you need to achieve success — in the dark makes no sense.