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Information technology advances have improved our ability to collect data and track discontinuity in a rapidly changing world. The accelerating pace of change, however, makes it increasingly difficult to interpret the information collected and use it successfully to predict future market evolutions. Consequently, organizations need decision processes that are designed to be reviewed and rethought so they continue to provide fresh insight into how to prepare for disruptions and opportunities. The solution: insert a learning and adaptation component into the decision-making process.
The Learning and Adaptation Decision Process
As leaders, we interact with colleagues as part of an enterprise-wide decision making system. Rather than simply addressing our own challenges, we must review what other organizations in our network have learned, and also share our solutions with other teams, both within and outside of our enterprise. This requires a perspective that monitors an entire system. In a knowledge-based, systemic learning organization, the objective of the Learning and Adaptation Decision Process is not only to think about a single problem and make decisions, but also to learn from problems existing throughout the enterprise.[1]
Actions taken using this approach can lead to decision making that encourages learning and is adaptive to rapidly changing conditions (see Exhibit 1). The exhibit offers a two-dimensional representation of a generalized and integrated cross-functional process that can improve decisions by revisiting assumptions. To be effective the process should incorporate organizational learning from a wide-variety of sources and flag problems and opportunities at an early stage when they can best be addressed.
The Decision Record: To enable reassessment of decision assumptions, the enterprise must do more than simply keep track of the final decision; it must keep a complete record, which includes the following:
Information that was used to support the decision.
The underlying assumptions and expected outcomes that informed the decision.
The types of information, knowledge and understanding that supported those assumptions and expected outcomes.
The Decision Record should be maintained as an active component of the organization’s memory. By using it to monitor and compare assumptions and expected outcomes with actual performance, it makes all aspects of the decision available to current and future decision-makers.
The Memory Comparator: Once the decision is implemented, we use the Memory Comparator Function to...