Table Management Decision Making

Boards decide to make a lot of choices — and the number is only getting bigger. These are decisions with high-stakes, a lot of uncertainty and are not the sort of thing you may delegate.

Suzanne Nimocks: I believe it is very important to get the board to have a sturdy decision-making procedure that allows them to do the job they are paid you need to do and help managing teams generate good decisions. A good method will include things like challenging the assumptions, playing devil’s advocate and helping management produce alternatives. It will also incorporate tactics for avoiding groupthink (eg thinking, Six Pondering Hats, Disney Planning Approach etc).

This can be helped with the utilization of tools just like RACI, and the board may have a formal procedure to decide which issues work for its insight. It might also use the output https://boardmeetingtool.net/ from a board escape or the function of committees that have been requested with selected decisions, to be sure that the decision is within the agreed risk desire for food and has been informed by all the advice it includes received.

Leigh Weiss: I think the key is to have a step rear from the certain decision you are facing and consider, on one hand, the scope of the potential impact (what’s at risk) and, alternatively, the level of certainty about whether it will appear. This helps you prioritize the best places to spend time and ensure that the board is producing a premium quality decision depending on the best facts obtainable.