Effective leaders are able to make decisions quickly, decisively and well.
It’s a daunting task because decisions require assessing the situation, reviewing available and relevant information and determining the best course of action in a timely manner.
Decisions will affect team performance, organizational strategy and how successful the team is. So, how do you make your best decisions? How do you get the best (and most honest) input from your team members?
Among the challenges leaders face when making decisions are:
- biases and emotional responses that may sway judgment.
- limited information or perspectives (such as “group think” when team members defer to the opinion of the majority).
- identifying and assessing risks.
- analyzing situations to determine potential outcomes.
- time constraints or urgency.
Using a decision-making framework can be a very helpful tool to add to your leadership toolkit.
A Structured Way to Improve Decision-Making
Best-selling co-authors and brothers Chip and Dan Heath developed the WRAP process, a decision-making framework, in their 2013 book, Decisive: How to Make Better Choices in Life and Work.
The Heaths listed four common pitfalls to making effective decisions:
- Narrow framing – only considering two counter-posed choices, such as this or that.
- Confirmation bias – looking for information that confirms our thoughts and beliefs.
- Following short-term emotions – giving more weight to our physical and emotional state.
- Feeling overconfident – believing that things will turn out as planned.
WRAP is an acronym for their decision-making process, with each step a way to overcome the pitfalls the Heath brothers identified.
This is what the WRAP acronym means:
W – Widen your options. Avoid narrowly framing a situation and explore alternative choices.
R – Reality-test your assumptions. Challenge initial conclusions with real-world tests.
A – Attain distance before deciding. Gain perspective by reducing emotional influences.
P – Prepare to be wrong. Plan for uncertainty and unexpected outcomes.
The Heath brothers argue that research shows that using a good decision-making process is more important than analysis because it mitigates faulty logic. The reverse, they say, is not true.
How to Apply the WRAP Decision-Making Framework
Here are practical ways to use the steps in the WRAP process:
W – Widen your options.
- What happens if you move from “this or that” to “this and that”?
- List multiple options. What happens if you don’t go with one of two choices? What other options could exist?
- What would be the next-best option?
- How have other folks solved this? What other options could you consider as benchmarks?
R – Reality-test your assumptions.
- What perspectives are you missing? Are there internal or external stakeholders you could or should consult?
- What would it take to make the choices you don’t prefer to work?
- Is there counter-evidence you’ve missed or disregarded?
- What would an outsider say?
- Is there evidence from others who have been in this situation or expert analysis?
- Can you test your assumptions or theories before finalizing a decision?
A – Attain distance before deciding.
- We often think short-term. How will you feel about this decision in 10 minutes from now? What about 10 months from now? A decade from now? What changes?
- If you were to give advice to someone else about this situation, what would you tell them to think about in the big picture or longer term?
- What will you regret if you don’t make this decision now?
- What are the most important long-term considerations?
P – Prepare to be wrong.
- What negative outcomes are possible? Potential negative outcomes are what make a decision difficult – so what can you do now, to minimize the impact? What can you prepare to do, should it be necessary, to mitigate the negative impact later?
- How could you be wrong? How are you overconfident?
- Have a pre-mortem to consider what you could have done differently to avoid failure.
Some folks find preparing to be wrong the most difficult step in the WRAP process. It’s human nature to want to avoid shame, but successful leaders find the emotional courage to make mistakes (and learn from them). Fear of being wrong (and/or fear of disappointing someone or one group over another) is what holds back some folks from making the decision. Of course, not making a decision is, in fact, a decision and often a poor one.
Other Considerations for Decision-Making Approaches
What happens when leaders are faced with ethically ambiguous situations? These usually involve people and the competing pressures and interests of team members, clients, investors or shareholders and the general public.
There are different ethical lenses through which you can approach an ethical dilemma to make a decision. These include the Rights Lens (protecting human rights), Justice Lens (fair and equal treatment), Utilitarian Lens (greatest balance of good over harm), Common Good Lens (most ethical decision to contribute to the overall welfare of the community), Virtue Lens (reflecting common virtues) or Relational Lens (enhances and preserves relationships).
The venerable HBR cautions against succumbing to time pressures, emphasizing the benefit of examining a problem from all angles.
To do this, HBR recommends using the E5 approach to problem-framing, which aligns with and complements the WRAP process: expand, examine, empathize, elevate and envision.
The E5 approach to problem-framing is a method to tackle problems (even complex or complicated challenges) by systematically reframing them. There are five steps (hence the E5 approach):
- Establish the need for reframing: If you’re stuck trying to use traditional problem-solving methods, would a different perspective help? If so, keep going through the rest of the E5 steps.
- Explore the current frame: What is your current understanding of the problem? What underlying assumptions are being made? Are there any constraints?
- Expand the frame: Broaden your perspective about this problem. What other viewpoints could there be? How can you challenge assumptions? What else about the problem can you explore?
- Evaluate and select a new frame: Review the possible new ways to frame this problem. How effective are they in addressing the main issues of this problem? Which one is the most effective?
- Execute the reframed problem: What solutions can you implement based on the frame you selected in step four? This reframing should lead to innovation and solutions.
Follow these five steps to develop a more comprehensive understanding of complex problems and identify effective solutions.
Using the WRAP decision-making framework or E5 approach to problem-framing helps leaders explore options and collect information while challenging their assumptions. Adopting a structured approach to decision-making gives leaders time to consider diverse perspectives and assess available data to make better-informed decisions.
Coach’s Questions
Which kinds of decisions are the most difficult for you? What challenges have you struggled with when making decisions? When do you think you could use the WRAP Process? How can you build in the WRAP process to part of your decision-making — specifically, where and when would you use it? How will you remind yourself to use it?
