Decision Making Exercises

Green Light Thinking

One of the best decision making exercises I know of is to involve everyone in defining the problem and possible solutions.

I was fortunate to have learned a process several years ago that I still will use today to flush out the problem, and then solutions to that problem.

It is easy and can be fun.

In order to implement this decision making exercise you must first call together anyone that has something to do with the process you are trying to fix.

So if you are in the hotel business and you have a problem in catering, you would get as many of the critical players together that have anything to do with catering.

I am also a strong believer in having the leader of the group someone that is not familiar with the problem, but must have good leadership skills. This is a decision making tip that I was able to implement early in my career. The purpose of having someone not familiar in charge of the exercise is so that those involved have to explain the process to them.

Read this article on Ethical Decsion Making in Business

What this will do is to make sure that we are really defining the issues clearly. An outside party will force everyone to understand the process.

So the first step in this decision making exercise is defining the problem. Although you may want to set a time limit on this, it is important to allow enough time to clearly let everyone have input.

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The leader of this group must be good and asking questions. You must continue to ask why we do it this way enough to get to the root causes.

Here is an example of the importance of asking questions.

A young daughter was watching her mother prepare a large ham for dinner at a family gathering one time. As she was watching her mother, her mother cut off a pretty large piece of the end of the ham and tossed it aside.

The daughter asked her mother why she did this. Her mother proudly said that she wasn't sure but she learned this from her mother. She went on to say if it was good enough for my mother it is good enough for me since my mother was a great cook.

So the daughter went to her grandmother and asked her why she cut off the end of the ham. Her grandmother proudly said that she learned this from her mother and with the same confidence she said if it was good enough for my mother it was good enough for me. My mother was the best cook ever.

So the daughter went to her great grandmother and asked her why she cut off the end of the ham. Her great grandmother began to laugh and said oh honey I had to cut off the end of the ham because it would never fit into our little ovens back then.

So, again I state! Ask enough questions and you may find out something that is very interesting.

So when you have flushed out enough of the process and why it is broken it is time to move on to the next phase of the decision making exercise.

Appoint someone to start recording the responses that will be given for the next phase onto a flip chart or white board. Have them leave enough space in between each response for additional responses later.

Then explain that you are going to solicit possible solutions to the problem at hand. That there are no wrong answers and no one should laugh or criticize any possible solution. This is sometimes referred to as Green Light Thinking. A quick decision making tip for you is to make sure your leader is capable of shutting down any forceful individuals in the group that may be over bearing and intimidate others. This will kill the Green Light Thinking process. This individual must have good leadership skills.

So now that you have recorded all the possible solutions from everyone it will be time to move to the next phase of the decision making exercise. But before you do make sure you have flushed out everyones thoughts. If your list is only ten or so, keep working it. The more the better.

The group leader should be using good leadership skills to encourage more responses. Maybe ask a lot of what if questions to the group. Maybe even come up with some real crazy solutions to get people thinking outside the box.

Once you feel you have all the answers possible, then you are going to ask everyone to make three choices to what they think are the best possible solutions to the problem.

This means that everyone will go up and put one mark by at least three different solutions that were presented. Once everyone has done this you will tally up which solutions received the top three votes.

This decision making exercise should give you at least three valid possible solutions to the problem. The great part about this and a decision making tip for you is that since everyone participated and got a chance to offer solutions you most likely will have buy in. The thing that seals the deal is the majority of the people that participated felt the solutions you are going with are the right solutions.

Remember everyone voted for them.

If the leader of the group demonstrated good leadership skills, you will have buy in and the best solution to your problem.

I recommend the following book written by Morgan D. Jones titled "The Thinkers Tookkit: 14 Powerful Techniques for Problem Solving."

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