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October 17, 2018

Presenting to Decision Makers: Tips for a Better Pitch

The chance to pitch to your company’s senior leadership or get in front a potential client is an opportunity you want to make the most of—obviously.

Yet, when we workshop presentations with individuals and groups, we see common mistakes in the way speakers go about this.

They're on the brink of blowing the opportunity, despite all the hard work.

These mistakes, at best, try the patience of valuable audience members. At worst, they diminish the speaker in the eyes of the very people the speaker hopes to impress.

"If you’re in a position to present to the most senior executives in your organization, you’re already considered smart and capable. You don’t need to prove it by sharing endless details." – Executive coach Sabina Nawaz writing for the Harvard Business Review

That’s why we were excited to come across this short article in the Harvard Business Review that’s packed with good advice. Executive coach Sabina Nawaz identifies four traps to avoid if you’re pitching the C-Suite:

• An Idea Without Its Problem
• An Idea Without a Clear ROI
• A Presentation Without Interaction
• Data Without Attention to Detail

To her advice, we add these tips  from our experience :

1. Open strong, with a clear statement about the value of what you’re presenting.

Nawaz talks about the importance of identifying the problem you’re solving and demonstrating the return on investment.

We say, don’t bury that information under a pile of background material. Give us at least a hint up front. 

Think like the audience: They have many concerns. Why does the problem you’ve identified deserve their attention? What have you got that can benefit them?

2. As for that background info—limit it!

We’ve seen account reps from advertising agencies open with an explanation of the value of marketing, in a general sense. To which we say: Don’t you think your client understands the value of marketing? Else why would you be here?

Decision makers may need some background, but they’re not college students working on an MBA. Cut to the new information—what you’ve discovered, what you offer. Take a hard look at the background you’re including. Whittle it down to the essentials, only what your target audience needs to understand the value of your proposal.

3. Anticipate the challenges.

Whenever you present to decision makers, you should expect questions—and not at the end of your presentation. Decision makers get to ask questions whenever they want.

Your job is to answer those questions, identify what you need to find out, and advance your presentation if their questions indicate you’re taking too long to get to the stuff they care about.

How do you do that ? By prepping in advance. Brainstorm the questions you think you’ll get. Run your presentation by others and get their questions. Analyze every claim you make and be ready to explain how you arrived at that conclusion.

4. Design your presentation to appeal to them, not you.

All presenters are advised to think like the audience, to understand where they’re coming from. But when you are pitching to senior executives or clients, this becomes so much more important.

They’re not your captive audience, peers, or direct reports who have to endure whatever you've got. Because you want something from them:

• Figure out their priorities. They may not be the same as yours.
• Find out how they like to receive information. For example, if they hate PowerPoint, you’d be foolish to show up with a massive deck of slides.
• Don’t do a data dump .  Be selective. Provide the most important information and put it into context:  Why does it matter? What does it mean?

You'll find more on how to prepare for questions here --and that Harvard Business Review article here .

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How to Effectively Persuade Key Decision Makers With Your Presentations

So, how do you design and deliver presentations that influence decision-makers to take the plunge and put their faith in what you have got to offer? As a presentation design company , we are here to fill you in with 5 presentation tips that will help you do a better job at persuading decision-makers with your presentations, regardless of whether they are your managers, colleagues, customers, or prospective clients.

Tip #1: Make the Decision-making Process Easier For Them

Did you know, most of us make as many as 35,000 decisions per day , on an average? As you can guess, this figure would typically be way higher for key decision-makers! 

So, if required, break the problem down into bite-sized pieces to make the decision-making process seem a bit less daunting for them. To achieve this, use short and concise lists clubbed together on the same slide in your presentation, instead of long paragraphs stretching over multiple slides. Not only will this make problem comprehension easier for them, but they might even thank you for it.

Tip #2: Make Sure You Get Your Point Across Effectively

Most decision-makers are detail-oriented and appreciate sensible recommendations. However, it’s your job to design a presentation that makes the decision-makers feel confident about your recommendations being well-informed, accurate, logical, and defensible. Of course, no one likes a poorly constructed idea.

To demonstrate that you’ve done your homework, you will need to present your thinking clearly. Using sufficient data to back your recommendations and presenting it in the form of crisp and relevant graphs (instead of a table) will help you get your point across effectively, without confusing your audience. If needed, you may also provide the datasheets or a comprehensive appendix separately, at the end of the presentation, for them to look at, whenever necessary.

Tip #3: Keep it Short and Simple

We’re all busy with work. Let alone key decision-makers and senior executives. Most of them will be more than happy if you initially come up with brief summaries in your presentation, with only the most crucial bits flagged or highlighted in the content you present, and share more information only when requested for. Also, if you have been allowed 30 minutes for the presentation, for example, you should try and keep 15-20 minutes for delivering it and save the remaining for the Q&A session or discussions.

Tip #4: Give Importance to Presentation Training and Preparation

Designing a perfect presentation isn’t the end-game; in fact, it’s just the beginning. When preparing for your presentation, you need to keep in mind what presentation approach might suit the decision-makers the most, and you might even need to tailor your approach to address each one of them equally well. For example, if the decision-maker you’re present to is talkative and energetic but also results-oriented, you should be prepared for answering their surprise questions with facts, data, and confidence – or you might lose their support.

There are so many other aspects related to mindset and body language which will come in handy during such crucial presentations, which we specifically train our clients for during our presentation training sessions. It’s worth noting that one of the only ways to ensure success with your presentations is to at least have either sufficient training in advance or plenty of experience with delivering presentations – the former solution being more like a shortcut to take if you’d rather not spend years learning through trial and error, but instead want hands-on expert guidance.

Tip #5: Never Raise Any Red Flags

As you may already know, most decision-makers are a bit more sceptical than the rest of us. So, presenting or saying anything that might conflict with their opinion, knowledge, or experience, might be a bad idea. More importantly, don’t be disrespectful or say things like: “I am surprised that someone at your level…” Rather focus more on informing or helping them make better decisions than judging them personally.

Not having answers to their basic questions may also raise red flags, so doing your homework is of utmost importance too. If you can have a team of presentation experts grill you while you give a demo presentation before the D-Day, it might turn out to be more valuable than any other advice we have shared in this post.

Final Thoughts

There is so much more to delivering presentations than using departmental verbiage, complex charts, and hand gestures. Every single aspect, from design to mindset, needs to be considered, well in advance. You need to carefully choose what your audiences need to see and hear, and precisely in what format. In case your audience changes, so should your approach and the language you use. 

By making a small investment towards learning how to influence decision-makers effectively, you can potentially leave a large, positive impact on not just the stakeholders, but also on the future of your organisation.

Need to brush up on your presentation skills? Take one of our Presentation Skills Training Courses .

We also offer a range of services ranging from Powerpoint Presentation Design to Pitch Deck Design services, to make sure that you always persuade the key decision-makers that you need to with your presentations. 

Mastering the Art of Pitch Deck Designn

How to avoid using filler words in your presentationn, a guide to slide count in presentationsn, 6 essential presentation skills for pitching successn, a guide to crafting powerful endings in presentationsn, what can our clients tell us about social media usen, a comprehensive guide to presentation openingn.

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Using presentations for decision-making

July 11, 2011 by Ellen Finkelstein 2 Comments

We hear a lot about how to persuade using presentations, but little about how to resist persuasion and make the best decision possible. So let’s talk about how you can use presentations to make a decision.

You have a decision to make and you want to make the best decision. You know that you need input, so you’ve asked a couple of subordinates or colleagues to present you the options. In other words, you can set the specifications for the presentation.

How do you get the best input possible? And, how do you use the presentations to make the right decision? There are many models for making decisions, but here is one approach.

1. Describe the problem

What problem is leading you to have to make a decision? By describing the problem clearly, you can make sure your decision will solve that problem. You can make a presentation describing the problem to your presenters.

2. Identify your goal

If you don’t identify your goal, it’s easy to be swayed to make a decision that doesn’t meet your goal. Include your goal in your presentation specifications so those working with you will look for the right data.

3. Identify the components

4. Collect the data you need

Collect as much information as you can about the situation. Data can be in many forms, such as lists of features, recommendations by others, historical information, surveys of users, expert opinion and research, etc. In our scenario, you are delegating this task, so your presenters make their presentations on the information they collected and how it relates to the problem and your goal.

5. Create a matrix of options

A table of the components and options, and ratings for each can help you decide. Here’s where you consider and balance the information you received. Perhaps your presenters promote a certain solution. Or you may listen to a series of sales pitches from various solution providers. But you need to stand back and evaluate before making a decision.

You may want to assign a person to be a “Devil’s advocate.” According to Wikipedia, “During the canonization process of the Roman Catholic Church, …the  Devil’s advocate was a canon lawyer appointed by Church authorities to argue against the canonization of the candidate. It was their job to take a skeptical view of the candidate’s character, to look for holes in the evidence, to argue that any miracles attributed to the candidate were fraudulent, etc.” In the same way, your Devil’s advocate can look for holes in the presentation’s argument to help you make a better decision.

6. Evaluate the effect of a decision on everyone who will be affected

It’s important to ask others what they think. Get pluses and minuses. This step will give you deeper insight into the implications of any decision.

Then implement it. You may use a presentation to present the results to those affected by the decision. You’ll be able to explain how this decision will help solve the problem.

8. Evaluate your decision after some time

If you think you made a poor decision, analyze how you could have made a better one and use that information for your next decision.

How do you integrate presentations into your decision making? How do you make sure that presentations you attend give you the balanced information you need

Related posts:

• Making great PowerPoint handouts in Microsoft Word
• Support your statements
• Inside secrets to making your visuals look professional
• Tell a story, or where’s the point in all this?

2 Leave a Reply

[…] Using presentations for decision-making […]

Very interesting topic on this site. I was just speaking about this subject. Thanks

How to present to a decision maker

By Sandra Naranjo Bautista

If a blog about an effective presentation sounds too basic for you, stop for a moment. You need to be effective and persuasive at communicating if you want your ideas to turn into action. Imagine you’ve worked hard on a project that you know will make an impact. If you can’t ‘sell the idea’ to the decision maker, it won’t go forward. You have to get it right. That’s why I’m writing this article.

The focus of this blog is not on the form or style of the presentation, I’ll refer to that though. This piece is about the content and structure to grab a decision maker’s attention . I’ll share hacks and tricks I learned from presenting to the President, seeing other ministers do it and from my own expectations of what I was looking for as a minister.

Start with your intention

Next time you have to present something, focus on your goal. What do you want to achieve with that presentation? Why should your audience care? In other words, when people walk out of that room – Zoom call to be precise- what do you want them to have in mind. That’s how you start.

How your presentation looks matters

The purpose of your ‘presentation’s look’ is to grab your audience’s attention. In the same way that if you are in a restaurant, you’ll be more likely to order a dish that looks delicious that is served to another table. The presentation has to be professional, clear and easy to read. It’s powerful to have images that support your main points when that’s possible. Our brain decodes visual information 60,000 times faster than text . Remember, the presentation is a complement to what you say. Don’t leave people wondering whether they should listen to you or read.

A beautiful presentation alone doesn’t do the trick, you need substance

Be ready to present in three minutes.

Build your presentation as if the person you are presenting to could leave in 3 minutes . Think of it as an elevator pitch. What would s/he need to know before leaving? Be clear on the action you want them to take. Have that clear first to build your presentation.

When I worked at the President’s office, I saw first-hand what a busy agenda looks like. Urgent matters always came up. That meant the President could leave at any minute. People that were effective at grabbing his attention at the start of the meeting, or just before he left, were able to either present later that day or reschedule with a higher priority, meaning their issue could be resolved and action could happen faster. Obviously, the subject of the meeting played a key role, but those initial minutes were crucial to explain why that meeting was important. There are two things you can do.

1. Start your meeting strong

Briefly explain what’s the purpose of the meeting and why it matters. Emphasize what’s at stake. The advantage of working in the public sector is that very likely you are already dealing with relevant issues. State the topics you’ll cover and the outcome expected by the end of the meeting. Show that you have a clear action plan.  

2. Have your 3-minute presentation ready

Imagine you are in the middle of your presentation, and the decision maker needs to leave. She gives you five more minutes. What do you do? Go to the slide you must have in every presentation, your summary.

In this slide you’ll have the most relevant information of the meeting and a clear call to action. Depending on the topic you could present evidence of your policy, estimated budget or results of the evaluation of a program. In other words, what does the person you are presenting to need to know to take the action you want them to take.

If you are in a situation where your meeting ends up being a five-minute talk, that slide will guide you through the most important points. Always have two printed copies of that slide, for you and for the person you are presenting to. When you have the opportunity to explain your ideas, don’t miss it.

Build an expandable presentation

Prepare your presentation so that you can adapt it with the flow of the meeting. Start with the level of detail you think is adequate. But, be ready to enter into as much detail as necessary to make your point -with just a few clicks- and stay within the time frame of your meeting. The opposite can be equally important. You might need to skip parts or go faster in others. Remember your final goal. By the end of the meeting, you want …

Finalize your presentation with a clear all to action.

There is one question you don’t want your audience to have at the end of your presentation: So what?

Have a clear call to action. It might be that you want someone to choose between three alternatives. You want the approval to move forward or to change something. Don’t forget to give all the pieces of information required to make a decision. It’s always useful to think about the objections the other person could have to the point you’re trying to make. It might be that your proposal takes too much time, is expensive or simply that it is not politically supportable. Consider those and address them in your presentation. Don’t leave it to the end.

Present with confidence and passion

I won’t get into the details of presenting, but there are three points that are relevant:

• Understand your audience . You probably know what your boss likes and doesn’t like. We all have our own preferences and biases. Thinking of those as you prepare your presentation will strengthen your presentation.
• Not everyone is an extrovert or a Ted talk speaker and that’s ok. You need the confidence that comes from knowing your subject . This generates credibility and trust for the decision maker. Show your passion for the topic, explain why you care and why that matters.
• Practice . The more important your presentation, the more you practice. Don’t skip this step. It will make you feel more confident and familiar with your presentation. When you present to someone else, you can identify areas that aren’t clear or that need improvement.

Start with the purpose of your presentation. Make it look professional, clear and engaging. Focus on the substance and get ready for every possible scenario, from a 3-minute meeting to one where all the details are required.  Present with passion and confidence in yourself.

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Podcast Ep 121 | How to Structure Presentations to Ensure Effective Decision Making

Leaders often waste a lot of time on decisions because meeting delegates are not well prepared with the information needed or aren’t well-disciplined with a process that can lead to an effective and quick decision.

In order to be a more effective leader, effective decision-making in meetings is crucial. Also, the format of rules and engagement to discuss, debate and decide impacts the effectiveness of meetings.

In this episode of the Growth Whisperers podcast, Brad Giles and Kevin Lawrence discuss how to achieve effective decision-making during presentations and meetings.

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EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

Please note that this episode was transcribed using an AI application and may not be 100% grammatically correct – but it will still allow you to scan the episode for key content.

Kevin Lawrence  00:13

Welcome to the Growth Whisperers podcast where everything we talk about every week is about building enduring great companies. Brad Giles, my partner down in Perth, Australia, and myself, Kevin Lawrence, up in Vancouver, Canada, get together weekly to talk about things that we’re passionate about things that we see happening in the companies that we work with, or in the studies that we do ourselves. All things that help us to build enduring great companies. So Brad, how you doing today?

Brad Giles  00:41

Lovely, very good indeed. And cold. It’s 11 degrees Celsius today, which might not sound a lot for you in Vancouver, but here in warm Perth, Australia, 11 degrees is cold. How are you doing?

Kevin Lawrence  00:55

We’re doing well. We’re in our summertime. So we’re warm, and we’re liking it. Even though we’re not getting the best summer. It’s alright. So hey, before we jump into the topic today, just a reminder to our subscribers, if you haven’t subscribed yet, just hit that subscribe button. And if you’re happy to give it a rating, we would appreciate it of course, any feedback or ideas you can always send to Brad or myself. So Brad, what are we digging into today?

Brad Giles  01:19

Today,  how to structure presentations to ensure effective decision making.

Kevin Lawrence  01:29

This one gets me and so many meetings, people make these presentations, which are interesting, informative, make it really hard to make an informed decision. In that moment, they just did some things differently. Man, it’d be much easier for them and for us, too. So yeah, this is a topic we’re both very passionate about. But first, let’s kick off with our Word of the Day. What’s yours?

Brad Giles  01:57

So what’s on my mind in this regard is its supply chain. We are just seeing so many people, it’s the holidays, the school holidays for kids over here at the moment. There are so many people who are reporting lost baggage with airlines or cancel our airlines are a mess.

Kevin Lawrence  02:17

Our airlines actually cut to national airlines have cut back service as a way to improve cut back the number of flights to try to improve service. Yeah. How’s that work?

Brad Giles  02:31

Yeah, they’re obviously struggling on so many levels. So yeah, it’s, that’s the pointy end. But broader than that, there are so many supply chain issues. It’s chain squeezes at the moment, what about yourself?

Kevin Lawrence  02:46

The phrase, that’s embarrassing. My daughter who is at the stage where she wants to get a job and is out there in the world, doing her own thing keeps using that phrase, that’s embarrassing for the things that she doesn’t want to do that put her out of her comfort zone. So I would say that, you know, as I we jokingly say, well, it’s embarrassing, it’s also embarrassing or uncomfortable not to get what you want. So there’s the discomfort of the doing the thing. And then there’s also the other discomfort of not getting the result that you want, and you’ve got to choose, and so joking with her with that, but a lot of times in companies, you know, that’s embarrassing, or which is code for that’s uncomfortable. You know, people avoid the hard things, and then they make it harder for themselves. So it’s really hard, or it’s embarrassing, what it’s embarrassing the supply issues that some supply chain issues that some people have, hey, well, well, we’ve got together pretty beautiful. Alright, let’s, let’s jump right in. So the idea here is that the distinction for today’s show is the distinction between discussing or debating, versus debating and deciding so one of the companies that I been doing some work with over the last couple of months, you know, I talk about a debate deficit where companies don’t get their debate, get through their debates. And they said, Kevin, we don’t have a debate deficit, man, we have nonstop debates. We’re always debating, we have a decision deficit. We don’t know how to get the darn things across the lines. Okay. I had to change my thinking from a debate deficit to a decision in company. And when you don’t make decisions, it constitutes up the whole system and slows the whole thing down. And you know, and we’re all guilty, including myself, sometimes dragging on decisions, you know, some decisions are hard. And the important ones that shouldn’t be hard. But it’s really today’s show, is that really, how do we make those important decisions better and faster, and the root of it is, we waste a lot of time discussing things because we are not well prepared. We don’t have the information we need for a well disciplined, well thought out. Effective decision. So then it takes way more time. time, people get frustrated. It’s not, for lack of actual, you know, intelligence, or knowledge or capability. It’s often process which we’ll dig into today or discipline at the core of it all.

Brad Giles  05:18

You know, it makes me think of Peter Drucker, who said that the job of the manager is to be efficient. And the job of an executive is to be effective. And if you’re going to be effective, a part of your role is you’ve got to do presentations, you’ve got to do presentations that lead to decisions. Okay, so the effectiveness of those presentations, is what matters.

Kevin Lawrence  05:45

Yes. And you got to teach your people to do the same. Yeah, you’ve got to teach your people how to make presentations to get the decisions that they believe are the right thing for the business. In many ways. It’s a little bit of sales person ship one on one, you know, we’re generally pretty good and selling some people better than others, but internally selling it to get the decision. Maybe we just need some sales training. Yep. So hey, if you want to take a look back at some previous episodes, Episode 58, collective intelligence, the key to leading a successful weekly meeting, also number 92, the meeting rhythm, the monthly leadership team meeting where we dig into some of this. And then finally, 114, the CEO only has one tool, which is meetings. And the root of this is creating highly effective presentations, discussions and decisions, which are a critical part of meeting so that sets it up. So the first point we have here is if you really want to make a presentation, have a successful outcome, know what the hell the question we’re debating, or the decision we’re making. And I don’t know how many times I’m in a room, and people start making their presentation. I go, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. What’s the outcome we’re looking for here? Well, I want to give you an update. Well, I don’t want to listen to it. I don’t want I want a decision. I don’t I don’t want updates. I don’t want to I want to know, what are you going to share with us so that we can make a decision, period? Update presentation, send it to me, and we’ll review it if it’s critical. So I don’t want to update wanting to help make decisions. Tell me why we’re listening to it wouldn’t be that rude. But that’s the intent.

Brad Giles  07:24

Albert Einstein said that if I had an hour to solve a problem, I’d spend 55 minutes thinking about the question. Now, it’s not exactly the same. But you know, what he’s really saying is, understand the question, get very clear on what is the outcome that we want to achieve?

Kevin Lawrence  07:42

Yeah. And why is that important Brad? Because well, it takes us into our second point, which we’ll get into in a minute, but it’s about the information you need, because depending on the question, you will need very different information. So to finish off point, number one, know the question that we’re discussing, or the decision to make, and Big Deal things like who owns it? Whose decision is it to make in the end? Is it a group decision, or it’s one person’s decision, and we want just alignment or feedback. Second, is it helps people love or hate racy, and we have it in a previous episode as well. But if you look at RACI, it’ll tell you who’s responsible, accountable, consulted and informed? And making sure that you know, we get later, but are the people that should be consulted involved? Or have they been involved in it? And there’s something out of your book made to thrive as well? Brad, you want to touch on that?

Brad Giles  08:36

Yeah. So all team meetings are conducted with an agenda and data is available to effectively make decisions during meetings. So this is from my book made to thrive, which is about the five roles of a CEO. So, you know, you have to make sure that the meetings are run? Well, you know, in the US military, they have a saying, which is any decision is better than no decision. So if you’re in a combat situation, even if it’s kind of the wrong decision is better than standing around and getting shot at.

Kevin Lawrence  09:07

And it’s sometimes easier in the high pressure, high stakes. Yeah, it’s these the it’s these not important, sorry, are not urgent, but important decisions where we tend to get locked down. So look, you got to know what you’re trying to accomplish. Start the conversation with that to set people’s head in the right direction and make sure that the right people are involved. So number two, we need a whole bunch of information to make this now we need a whole bunch of information and we need it succinctly. We don’t need 427 slides. Please don’t send us 400 line spreadsheets. Right? If you want an executive decision need to present information in an executive way and it’s like, you know, why are we doing this? What are alternatives? What is our likelihood of success? Like how what’s the risks in this and if we Get it right. What’s the real benefit? No, I love this when we talk about like implementing CRMs, and Salesforce and stuff like that. And you know, it’s funny. Some people think implementing Salesforce increases sales. I think it’s almost hilarious. Now, if you have a problem in your company with tracking leads, and losing leads a CRM or something that manages leads that come in lots of people use HubSpot, and stuff like that. It can to help track and better manage leads. But last I heard sales management software doesn’t make salespeople have more meetings and make more presentations. I don’t know, maybe it does. But I generally think people get lost in this stuff. So anyway, you’re gonna have these beautiful debates like, is it actually gonna have the benefit that you think you gotta think of what dependencies and then and then you got to back it up with numbers, like, show us that you got to show us some current data in the business that relates to this and show us how it will be different IE, do you have a model, financial model, and then the main thing, if you’re going to bring a financial model, you better have had a finance person go through it with you. If you’re an operator, or you’re an HR, or you’re an IT or something else, and you want a decision, let your colleagues and finance validate your thinking with real math from the business, you’ll have a way better chance and some companies, it’s actually required.

Brad Giles  11:31

I saw a great example to this point, that CEO does when he’s running a meeting, he will send the slide deck, like you said, 427 slides, it’s not like that it’s you know, 10, 20, 30 slides, he’ll send it in the days prior to their meeting, expecting that everyone will review it. And then his job during the meeting is to talk about the nuance of the slide or talk to the deck. So assuming that you’ve already read it, he’s gonna say so this is why this chart matters.

Kevin Lawrence  12:14

I love the theory in practice, people reading stuff before a meeting, unless it’s a big strategic meeting, and people are setting aside for hours to prepare. I don’t ever count on it. Because some of the most important people often don’t read the damn stuff. If they have the discipline in the company, that’s great. It’s just that it’s rare.

Brad Giles  12:38

He has the discipline. And this is his weekly update. A part of collective intelligence, that type of thing.

Kevin Lawrence  12:45

Hey, if it works, then that is an outstanding approach. Yeah. And I would never count on it. But so which takes us to our next part of the point.He gets it prepared and shares it. I just find that generally, getting people to read information before him unless it’s a big meeting. It’s, it’s just challenging. So. So which takes us? So the final thing on the date, what you need to know is basically, what’s the ask? Clearly? How much you ask him for? Over what period of time? You know, we’ll talk about in a future episode, like, is this a bullet? Or is this a cannonball? Like, is it proven? Is it not proven? Yeah, but the on to the next point number three is, is that I call it you know, 80/20 meeting for decisions. The value is in the questions and the perspectives that it’s in the discussion. The mistake people make is they’ve got an hour slot to talk about the new IT infrastructure. Yeah. And then they present for 57 minutes. And there’s only three minutes to discuss. You’re not going to get a decision, I can guarantee it. So we help leaders in companies by saying if there is an hour slot 20% of that time maximum to present, which would be up to 15 minutes to present 12 minutes, I aim for 10. And if you can’t make your whole pitch in 10 minutes, you haven’t thought it through well enough yet. Or you don’t know how to present to executives. Yeah. So generally, even if you have sent it in advance, which is ideal for sure. Reviewing the key slides, or in some companies, just everybody reads it, executives seem to think that them making a verbal presentation is the best thing to do. It’s everyone does a PowerPoint. And that’s why they always take an hour. The other theory is write a two page document and we’ll just sit quietly and read it in the meeting, and then we’ll discuss it. I think it takes more discipline to write a two page document than a PowerPoint although they’re just you know, they’re not as pretty.

Brad Giles  15:01

But succinctly get the key points across that is that contains the information required for a decision to be debated. A and B decided and allocate. Your point is 80/20 rule is not an hour, 10 minutes to present, please, and then let’s discuss it.

Kevin Lawrence  15:21

It’s the discussion that will help us to get to the point of the debate. And if you’re really smart, you should anticipate every single question. And if you’re not that smart or experienced, your managers should prepare you. And you should, the best people that make presentations, they already know what we’re going to ask. And they already have the questions. We don’t have that experience run up by somebody else. First. It’s this is for the person preparing it is super important, because it’s pretty predictable if you’re an experienced leader. So the value is in the questions at 20 Present 20% of the time maximum no matter what you’re allotted, because you want to hear from people. Yeah, the next thing is, how do you actually go ahead, set the table for debate?

Brad Giles  16:12

So how do you make sure that the debate will be healthy, that the debate won’t go on. And as always happens, people bring up the same old things, the same old problems, time and time and time again, and you go down into these rabbit holes, or people have personal missions that they want to address. So allocate an amount of time, we’re going to talk for 20 women debate this for 20 minutes, or 40 minutes, whatever it is, and keep people to that time. We’re now halfway through, we’ve now got 10 minutes remaining, we’ve still got to cover off those three points before we get to the decision.

Kevin Lawrence  16:58

Yeah, I even use a timer. If there is 40 minutes for discussion, I set a timer for 30. And I say there, look, I’m setting the timer for 30. That lets us know that we have 10 minutes left, just and I’m putting on my phone. So it’s loud, so people can hear it. It’s a guideline or a guide post to help us.

Brad Giles  17:15

Yeah, yeah. So understand the rules for debate. Like we don’t do this. And we don’t do that. Like it should be healthy debate. We say how do we here’s one thing that I’ve noticed, you know, on Zoom meetings, they’ve got this raise hand function. Yeah, with most of the teams that I’ve been working with, we weren’t using that. And one team, they just, they just started using it. And it was so effective as facilitating it.

Kevin Lawrence  17:46

Most of our teams, we got the habit of using the user. The only problem is, as a facilitator, sometimes I’m so focused on what’s going on, I would still miss the hands. I know. But then, but then other people are calling it out. And the best thing on Zoom, you look on the right hand side, and they’re put in order of when they came up so you can easily manage and respect the order. But yeah, that raise the hand once you got that going. It’s beautiful. We often have it in our meetings, including myself, a facilitator, we have the hand raising, and it’s interesting. The team all owns it. Again, I’ll be facilitating a debate and I’m in it, and we’re working on it. And someone’s gonna go I go, Oh, Brendan, you’re next. Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, sorry. Sorry. Josephine was so Joseph. The team will help it but it’s the raising the hand is a simple, elegant way to not trample and just obviously facilitator schools to help that but, you know, it’s a great exercise for a team to come up with your rules for debate. Like how do you do it? Like what is you know, like one of my ones I hate is soldier gathering. Well, everybody thinks you’re an idiot. Now I can tell you I think you’re an idiot. But everywhere you go, you start gathering other people’s opinions to put more weight behind your own cheese anyways, people have their own things and you know, one company I’ve worked with they have phrases like Have you considered instead of I think anyway, just however you do but yeah, the main thing is you’re saying there Brad is set yourself up for an effective debate and one of the big things is are the right people in the room because if there is someone who is a key part of this if this decision is there pitching the new IT system, but you don’t have the user like if it’s a new retail POS point of sale system and the head of retail right or or the people in that part of the business aren’t there you can’t have a discussion because if the back of house it people love it, but the front of house don’t. It’s a waste of time, so having the right people in the room to make the decision.

Brad Giles  19:59

Yeah, and then we move to the next point, which is, eventually it’s time to decide why minutes left, we’re at 55 minutes of a 60 minute discussion. Yeah, we’ve presented you understand all of the data, the costs, whatever it might be, you understand the situation. we’ve debated, we’ve heard from disparate people’s questions and perspectives. Okay, so now it’s time to decide, when the whole reason that we’ve come together is to make a decision, what are we going to do? Are we going to go for this? Or are we not? Or is there a third option that we hadn’t considered, that we’ve had has come up through the debate? But yet, what are we going to? How do we land this? And who’s accountable for it?

Kevin Lawrence  20:40

Yep. And often, it’ll come down to disagree and commit, right? Is that you’re not gonna, if you push them for consensus, it’s gonna take forever, and we’ll all go around the room and some decisions if I’m in the room, say, okay, just, you know, so the final decision, is this just show of hands, okay? And just go around, everyone’s good, good, good, good. Someone’s waffle in their head. You know, hey, Margarita Margarita. is still on the edge. She’s like, yes. Are you willing to although you don’t fully agree, commit to this? And wholeheartedly follow through? Yes. Okay, great. Let’s go. Decision made. Yep. And then document it, write the damn things down. You know, in a lot of companies, we have a discipline and noting who what wins, we’ve actually tweaked it to decisions and actions, actions is the who owns but also logging those decisions. And then it gets circulated to anyone that was missing at the meeting. So documenting those decisions. And, you know, if those notes aren’t enough, sometimes there’s other specific people that need to be informed. But some point you got to call it, I think, in Robert’s Rules of Order, they call it calling the question, I think, is what they call it. So the key point here is, hey, people make a lot of presentations, they burn up a lot of our time, and don’t get decisions. So they have to come back and present again, that’s our fault. We need to set them up to win, and not let them into the room until they’re ready to win. By the way, I spent half an hour with an executive Friday afternoon. She wanted to present something I know, it’s a very sensitive and challenging issue to get a decision in that company. So I asked to see it first. Well, we went through and I helped her with it, because I was passionate about it. And we had to make some notable changes just on her third, last slide, which is a third to last slide. Because if she needed to have strong recommend, there wasn’t a recommendation. It was an information share. Yeah, which would lead to a nightmare. And so we helped to figure but basically, we had to restructure it so that it now can be effective, with the two of us putting our brains together on so how do we be effective, get the decisions we want and move ahead and not bore people to death and waste their time. So number one, be clear on the what we’re debating and the decision that we want made? What’s the ask to who’s accountable and is going to prepare all that information. So we can succinctly have it and then three, in the meeting 80% of the time is discussion at only up to 20% the presentation, right?

Brad Giles  23:25

So once we understand the question that we’re answering, once we understand the values and the perspectives, but then we’ve got to make sure that we’re facilitating a debate, which is the bulk of the time making sure that everyone is heard, making sure that all of the questions are answered and that everyone understands what’s being done using some of those things such as timers, the rules for debate, raising hands that we mentioned before. And then finally get to the point where it is time to decide, call it out. explicitly say now how are we going to sort decide how are we going to close this issue? Make sure that we walk away with a decision and with accountability. We mentioned racy earlier, maybe that’s something to consider but making sure that the decision is made and the accountabilities are set.

Kevin Lawrence  24:15

Yeah, one last point branches that I loved is making sure everyone’s heard. One of my favorite techniques and I forget but as we always get to hear from the quiet ones, because they’re thinking while the rest of us are yapping, but as to go around the room. Hey, what’s your perspective and literally do a circle around the room to get the views? Yep, as long as you’re awesome. All right, sir Brad.

Brad Giles  24:39

Well, I hope that you’ve enjoyed today’s episode of the growth whisperers You can find us on YouTube by searching the growth whisperers whispers if you’re interested in seeing our smiling faces. Also, we have interesting newsletters that we produce each week. Kevin’s website is Lawrence and co.com and mine is evolution partners.com dot I you do hope that you’ve enjoyed today’s episode, how to structure presentations to ensure effective decision making. Have a great week.

Home Blog Business A Lowdown on Decision-Making for Business Leaders

A Lowdown on Decision-Making for Business Leaders

You’ve got an important decision to make. But instead of cooperating, your brain goes into chaos mode, bombarding you with conflicting thoughts and loads of doubts. At the same time, the clock is ticking, raising your anxiety levels even further. Sounds familiar? 

Most of us are not naturally good at decision making. But we can train our brain to churn out good decisions on command even in tough situations. This post will explain exactly how our decision making process works and what can you do to become better at each step of it. 

What is Decision Making? 

Every day we make a myriad of choices — from what to have for breakfast to how to better plan a project. Sometimes we operate with sufficient knowledge and data. Other times, we rely more on intuition and hope that we are doing the right thing.

Dartmouth provides the following decision making definition: 

Decision making is the process of making choices by identifying a decision, gathering information, and assessing alternative resolutions. 

Our day-day decisions rarely require more than a minute of analysis. Their consequences and impact are easy to gauge too. However, in business settings, every decision can have a long-lasting impact, pertaining to different people, processes, and outcomes. Hence, knowing how to collect, analyze, and act on data, rather than on a hunch is key to driving consistent, desirable results. 

Types of Decision Making 

Every decision-making process is based on data — our past knowledge, experiences, opinions, emotions, and biases developed. Rarely if ever, decisions are made outside of a wider context. Respectively, both internal and external contexts dictate the types of decisions we have to make.

The most basic classification is instant vs informed decision making:

Instant decisions

Are daily, nearly automatic responses to certain events. We make these based on our emotions and past knowledge of what worked and what didn’t. 

Informed decisions

Represent our rational decision making abilities. These are mostly driven by our critical thinking, empirical evidence, and problem-solving skills. 

Types of Decision Making Models in Business 

Such data-driven decision-making is more common in work settings. Respectively, the decisions leaders take every day can be classified into three groups :

Furthermore, the decision-making model can be also classified as centralized vs decentralized decisions. A centralized decision making process occurs when senior executives and stakeholders take most decisions. However, decentralized (or shared decision making) means that leaders at different levels of the organization have the authority to make individual decisions. 

The 7 Step in Decision Making Process 

There’s a multitude of decision-making styles and approaches, but ultimately every type of successful decision boils down to following the next steps. 

1. Identify the Problem

Our brain is naturally puzzled when presented with an unclear goal. Therefore, instead of acting rationally, we procrastinate, engage in excessive information gathering, or let decision making biases trump the logic. 

Don’t dwell too long on trying to collect as much information as possible. In most cases, you’ll just get stuck with analysis paralysis. Instead, spend more time articulating the problem at hand, so that you could find the right information to back up your decision. Or in words of Albert Einstein:

If I were given one hour to save the planet, I would spend 59 minutes defining the problem and one minute resolving it.

Oftentimes, business leaders think backward — from the outcome to the solution and then the problem. Such a line of thinking often leads to overlooking more creative and elegant solutions that could lead to a similar or even better outcome. Always make a specific problem the focal point of your thinking. When analyzing a solution, it can also be a good idea to share the advances or findings with your team through a presentation with valuable progress.

2. Collect Information 

You can’t make a good decision without sufficient data. Once you have a formalized problem statement, you need to find sufficient points for making the optimal decision. Several of our PowerPoint templates and slides mentioned in this article provide an excellent path to understanding some of that relevant info to collect. Also, you will find some great questions to ask yourself and your team.

The consensus-decision-making process will seek those evidence from other participants. More independent and authoritative leaders will rely more on personal expertise and hard numbers.

As per usual, the best approach lies somewhere in the middle — use both personal judgments and relevant data from others. Whether you are analyzing evidence provided by others or one’s you’ve amassed personally, always ask the following questions: 

• What is the source of the information? Is it authoritative and trustworthy? 
• How old is the data? Is it still relevant in the current market conditions?
• What sources were used to produce this information? 
• Does the source make any unrealistic claims? 

The above are baseline fact-checking best practices that should be applied in decision making in management.

3. Assess the Alternatives 

Based on the information you’ve gathered, create a simple decision-making matrix to analyze different paths of action. Develop a set of scenarios, but don’t rush to classify them as “best”/“worst” immediately. Instead, try to determine how fast each route could help you reach your goal and what would be the tradeoffs. You can also decide if this is a good moment to share through a presentation with stakeholders the steps taken and the action plan moving forward.

Remember: ethical decision making model does not always mean taking the easiest route, but rather pursuing one that is good both for your business and the people you serve. 

Here are two helpful PowerPoint templates to help you at this stage:  Decision tree diagram for PowerPoint and Sales Tree Templates .

4. Weigh the Evidence

After the analysis session, you’d probably have a list of more favorable alternatives. List them up in priority order and then take another look at the evidence you’ve collected earlier.

At this stage, your main goal is to minimize the impact of personal bias on the decision. Our brain is a fickle instrument that can interpret the same information in different ways. Recent laboratory studies , for instance, found that different people can interpret the same data differently, based on their socio-political beliefs. For example, 68% of Republicans decided that a group of people on the videotape were a riot, whereas only 30% of Democrats thought the same. In reality, the tape demonstrated a peaceful protest.

Acknowledging and eliminating such bias can be challenging. For that reason, when making hard decisions, seek second opinions or leverage extra tools for drawing conclusions. For example, a 2×2 Matrix Quadrant can help you plot various evidence along the axis to better assess the information. 

5. Select Among the Alternatives 

Once you’ve done with examining all the evidence, settle on the scenario that appears as the best choice for you. If you don’t have the ultimate contender at this point, refine your choice using one of the popular decision making theories.

When working with your team, a good approach is to use the PowerPoint presentation templates like the Eisenhower Decision Matrix which provides a sense of urgency in the decision making. Also, the Vroom-Yetton decision model considers how many people should be involved in a decision, if it represents an individual matter or a group one.

Circle of competence

Popularized by Warren Buffett, this framework encourages you to always stay within your area of competence aka what you know best. If you recognize that a certain scenario can lead you into an area when you lack skills or knowledge, pick another route that lets you stay in your lane and capitalize on your strengths. 

6. Take Action

If you’ve completed all of the above steps, you’ll have a detailed plan of action. Now you’ll need to follow through and walk down the selected path. Making decisions isn’t always the hardest part. Acting on them can be much more challenging, especially if your decision assumes significant changes. In this stage, you can ask yourself: How will I share this with the team? A vital tip is to build a presentation that will guide the implications and changes a decision might represent to an organization.

As you plan the execution, consider how you will handle change management and potential resistance. Also, account and address potential risks and put down mitigation plans for those. 

7. Review Your Decision and the Consequences

Once the deed is done and you’ve completed the execution, analyze whether your actions helped resolve the problem formulates at Step 1. If the outcomes didn’t fully address the problem, you may need to repeat some of the earlier steps and consider following the next-best alternative.

To better understand why your decision didn’t work best, consider doing an after-action review — once a military practice, now used by well-performing teams to assess how the actual results differ from the expected ones, what’s the reason for that, and how we can rectify the outcomes

Alternatively, you can use another assessment tool such as the Action evaluation matrix PowerPoint templates which even thou is more geared towards problem-solving effectiveness, can be useful to decide the urgency of each action. A great feature of this matrix is that it allows the possibility to analyze problems and solutions and create a root cause analysis and potential understanding workarounds.

Other Popular Decision-Making Models and Frameworks

For years, different researchers have attempted to discern what makes good decision making and how business leaders can get better at calling the right shots. 

Consequently, many different decision making frameworks have emerged, on top of those we have discussed so far. 

If you are still struggling to make the right decision at this point, try to apply the following tactics.

Also developed by the US military, this framework prompts you to use a cyclic approach to decision making. First, observe the current situation and determine how different stressors shape it. Then, orient yourself towards recognizing all the shaping forces and try to eliminate any influences or bias from your thinking. Next, decide on the best course of action based on the information you have and the analysis you did. Finally, act on the selected course. If the first decision led to a subpar outcome, repeat the OODA cycle again. 

Recognition-Primed Decision Model

An intuitive decision-making model that prompts you to make a quick decision in a complex setting. First, dwell on the problem — gather input, data, and opinions; formalize the outcomes. Think if you have encountered similar situations before and if you could apply the same resolution to this one. Then, analyze the information. Do a mental simulation of different scenarios. Focus on determining the practicalities of each option. If you feel that you don’t have enough data, go back to step 1. Otherwise, proceed with the decision implementation.

Ladder of Inference

In this case, you are prompted to take your decision through seven “rungs” in the ladder, representing your thought process. These include: general facts, selected reality (the context of your decision), interpreted reality, assumptions, conclusions, beliefs, and actions. 

If you want to select additional decision making PowerPoint templates you can check our gallery , and scroll for the diagram that fits your need.

To Conclude 

No one is born with stellar decision making skills. The best leaders develop them over time by accumulating experience, applying different decision-making frameworks, and learning to recognize their biases. You too can get better at making decisions by using the tips and tools, outlined in this post! 

1. 5 Step Decision-Making and Problem-Solving Diagram for PowerPoint

Learn more about the 5 Step Problem Solving technique; this framework allows businesses to make informed and structured decisions in an intuitive 5 step format.

Use This Template

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Business Diagrams, Business PowerPoint Templates, Business Presentations, Decision Making, Decision Tree, Leadership Filed under Business

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Three keys to faster, better decisions

Two years ago, we wrote about how it was simultaneously the best and worst of times for decision makers in senior management. Best because of more data, better analytics, and clearer understanding of how to mitigate the cognitive biases that often undermine corporate decision processes. Worst because organizational dynamics and digital decision-making dysfunctions were causing growing levels of frustration among senior leaders we knew.

Since then, we’ve conducted research to more clearly understand this balance, and the results have been disquieting. A survey we conducted recently with more than 1,200 managers across a range of global companies gave strong signs of growing levels of frustration with broken decision-making processes, with the slow pace of decision-making deliberations, and with the uneven quality of decision-making outcomes. Fewer than half of the survey respondents say that decisions are timely, and 61 percent say that at least half the time spent making them is ineffective. The opportunity costs of this are staggering: about 530,000 days of managers’ time potentially squandered each year for a typical Fortune 500 company, equivalent to some $250 million in wages annually. 1 On average, 54 percent of respondents to our survey report spending more than 30 percent of their time on decision making. And 14 percent of C-suite executives report spending more than 70 percent of their time on the topic. Assuming that at an average Fortune 500 company of 56,400 employees, 20 percent are managers who work 220 days per year: these managers spend an average of 37 percent of their time making decisions, and 58 percent of this time is used ineffectively. Our sources for this estimate included fortune.com and the US Bureau of Labor Statistics (for salary data).

Managers at a typical Fortune 500 company may waste more than 500,000 days a year on ineffective decision making.

The reasons for the dissatisfaction are manifold: decision makers complain about everything from lack of real debate, convoluted processes, and an overreliance on consensus and death by committee, to unclear organizational roles, information overload (and the resulting inability to separate signal from noise), and company cultures that lack empowerment. One healthcare executive told us he sat through the same 90-minute proposal three times on separate committees because no one knew who was authorized to approve the decision. A pharma company hesitated so long over whether to pounce on an acquisition target that it lost the deal to a competitor. And a chemicals company CEO we know found himself devoting precious time to making hiring decisions four levels down the organization.

In our previous article, we proposed solutions that centered around categorizing decision types and organizing quite different processes against them. Our latest research confirms the importance of this approach, and it also highlights for each major decision category a noteworthy practice—sometimes stimulating debate, for example, while in other cases empowering employees—that can yield outsize improvements in effectiveness. When improvements in these areas are coupled with an organizational commitment to implement decisions—embracing not undercutting them—companies can achieve lasting improvements in both decision quality and speed. Indeed, faster decisions are often a happy outcome of these efforts. Our survey showed a strong correlation between quick decisions and good ones, 2 Respondents who reported that decision making was fast were 1.98 times more likely than other respondents to say that decisions were also of high quality. suggesting that a commonly held assumption among executives—namely, “We can have good decisions or fast ones, but not both”—is flawed.

Three fixes that make a difference

Avoiding life on the bubble.

Here’s a variation of a conversation we have with some frequency: in talking with a manager about her work, we ask about a routine decision we would expect her to make—about hiring, for example, or pricing or marketing.

“I don’t make that call, actually,” she says.

When pressed further, she admits that her boss doesn’t make it either. “That decision,” she says, “is made by the CEO.”

Decisions that bubble up to where they don’t belong waste time and effort and often result in poorer outcomes. In some cases, the root cause might be unclear processes. In the absence of clear decision rights or rules, for example, there may be little to stop people from escalating decisions they simply don’t like. One leader we know described a syndrome she dubbed “Everybody gets a vote and the polls are always open.” In this organization, any leader can object to a decision and often stop it or slow it down. The only way out of the logjam is to escalate it to the company’s senior-most executives, which wastes time and risks lowering decision quality.

Escalating decisions can also reflect deeper challenges in the organization’s culture. For example, if an underling learns that over time when the boss says, “You should make that decision,” she really means, “so long as you make the same decision I would have made,” then decisions are sure to bubble up. Similarly, in corporate cultures that punish mistakes, there is little upside in making a decision that turns out to be right—and lots of downside if it’s wrong. In such environments, escalating decisions becomes second nature.

Solving deeply rooted cultural challenges is beyond the scope of this article. Nonetheless, companies can take steps to avoid spending quite so much time on the bubble. These include providing clear rules and using meeting charters to clarify which decisions are in and out of scope for each committee, as well as establishing criteria for when decisions made lower down should be escalated. Capability building can help, too, for example, in learning to have difficult conversations or coaching leaders on how to influence outcomes without taking over control.

Of the four decision categories we identified two years ago, three matter most to senior leaders. Big-bet decisions (such as a possible acquisition) are infrequent but high risk and have the potential to shape the future of the company; these are generally the domain of the top team and the board. Cross-cutting decisions (such as a pricing decision), which can be high risk, happen frequently and are made in cross-functional forums as part of a collaborative, end-to-end process. Delegated decisions are frequent but low risk and are effectively handled by an individual or working team, with limited input from others. (The fourth category, ad hoc decisions , which are infrequent and low stakes, is not addressed in this article.) Clearly, it is important that these types of decisions happen at the appropriate level of the company (CEOs, for example, shouldn’t make decisions that are best delegated). And yet, just as clearly, many decisions rise up much higher in the company than they should (see sidebar, “Avoiding life on the bubble”).

Even those businesses that do make decisions at the right level, however, complain about slow and bad outcomes. The evidence of our survey—and our experience watching executives grapple with this—suggests that while the best practices for making better decisions are interrelated, there’s nonetheless one standout practice that makes the biggest difference for each type of decision (exhibit).

Big bets—facilitate productive debate

Big-bet decisions can be future-shapers for a company, the most important decisions leaders make. And they often receive much less scrutiny than they should.

The dynamic inside many decision meetings doesn’t help. It’s as if there is an unspoken understanding that the meeting should proceed like a short, three-act play. In the first act, the proposal is delivered in a snappy PowerPoint presentation that summarizes the relevant information; in the second, a few tough yet perfunctory questions are asked of the presenter and answered well; in the final act, resolution arrives in the form of an undramatic “yes” that may seem preordained. Little substantive discussion takes place.

In a global agricultural company, for example, the members of the executive committee tended to speak up only if their particular area of the business was being discussed. The tacit assumption was that people wouldn’t intrude on colleagues’ area of responsibility. Consequently, when the top team moved to decide on a proposed new initiative in Europe, the leaders from the US business stayed silent, even though they had years of hard-won experience in marketing and cross-selling similar agricultural products to those new ones under discussion. Nonetheless, the decision was made, the products launched—and sales lagged expectations. Later, the European sales force was frustrated to learn their US counterparts had relevant experience that would have helped.

Whether the cause of such dynamics is siloed thinking or a consensus-driven culture (of which, more later), the effect on decision making is decidedly negative. Bet-the-company decisions require productive interactions and healthy debate that balance inquiry and advocacy. In fact, the presence of high-quality interactions and debate was the factor most predictive of whether a respondent in our survey also said their company made good, fast big-bet decisions.

Would you like to learn more about our People & Organizational Performance Practice ?

Leaders can encourage debate by helping overcome the “conspiracy of approval” approach to group discussion. Simple behavior changes can help. For example, consider starting the decision meeting by reminding participants of the overall organizational goals the meeting supports, in order to reframe the subsequent discussions. Then assign someone to argue the case for, and against, a potential decision or the various options under consideration. Similarly, ask the leaders of business units, regions, or functions to examine the decision from outside their own point of view. A rotating devil’s advocate role can bolster critical thinking, while premortem exercises (in which you start by assuming the initiative in question turned out to be a failure, and then work back for likely explanations) can pressure test for weak spots in an argument or plan. 3 For more advice on sparking debate, see Morten T. Hansen, “How to have a good debate in a meeting,” Harvard Business Review , January 10, 2018, hbr.org. And for more on premortem techniques, see Daniel Kahneman and Gary Klein, “ Strategic decisions: When can you trust your gut? ,” McKinsey Quarterly , March 2010.

The objective should be to explore assumptions and alternatives beyond what’s been presented and actively seek information that might disconfirm the group’s initial hypotheses. Creating a safe space for this is vital; at first it can be helpful for the most senior participants to ask questions instead of expressing opinions and to actively encourage dissenting views. Productive debate is essentially a form of conflict—a healthy form—so senior executives will need to devote time to building trust and giving permission to dissent, irrespective of the organizational hierarchy in the room.

A final note of caution: minimizing the number of debate participants to speed up decision making could harm decision quality. As many studies show, greater diversity brings greater collective wisdom and expertise, along with better performance . This is also true in decision making. To ensure a faster process, companies should manage the expectations of debate participants by limiting their voting rights and sticking to other agreed-upon processes, as we explore next.

Cross-cutting decisions—understand the power of process

An executive we know joked during a meeting that “a committee is born every day in this organization.” Just then, another executive nearby looked up from his computer to announce he had just been invited to join a new committee. The comedic timing of the line was perfect, but it wasn’t a joke.

Or perhaps the joke is on the rest of us? We often find companies maintaining a dozen or more senior-executive-level committees and related support committees, all of which recycle the same members in different configurations. The impetus for this is understandable—cross-cutting decisions, in particular, are the culmination of smaller decisions taking place elsewhere in the company. And cross-cutting decisions were the ones that executives in our survey had the most exposure to, regardless of their seniority.

Yet when it comes to cross-cutting decisions (involving, for example, pricing, sales, and operations planning processes or new-product launches), only 34 percent of respondents said that their organization made decisions that were both good and timely.

There are many reasons cross-cutting decisions go crosswise. Leaders may not have visibility on who is—or should be—involved; silos make it fiendishly hard to see how smaller decisions aggregate into bigger ones; there may be no process at all, or one that’s poorly understood.

Solving for cross-cutting decisions, therefore, starts with commitment to a well-coordinated process that helps clarify objectives, measures, targets, and roles. In practical terms, this might mean drawing a bright line between the portion of a meeting dedicated to decisions from the parts of a meeting meant to inform or discuss. Any recurring meetings (particularly topic-focused ones) where the nature of the decision isn’t clear are ripe for a rethink—and quite possibly for elimination.

Good meeting discipline is also a must. For example, a mining company realized that its poor decision making was related to the lack of rigor with which executives ran important meetings. As a result, the top team developed a “meeting manifesto” that spelled out required behaviors, starting with punctuality. The new rules also required leaders to clarify their decision rights in advance, and to be more deliberate about managing the number of participants so that meetings wouldn’t become bloated, on the one hand, or lack diverse views, on the other.

The manifesto was printed on laminated posters that were put in all meeting rooms, and when the CEO was seen personally reinforcing the new rules, the news spread quickly that there was a new game afoot. As the new practices took hold, the benefits became apparent. In pulse-check surveys conducted over the course of the following year, the company’s measures of meeting effectiveness and efficiency went up by almost 50 percent.

A social-network analysis, meanwhile, allowed a global consumer company to identify time wasting around decision making on a heroic scale—as many as 45 percent of interactions were found to be potentially inefficient, and 23 percent of the individuals involved in an average interaction added no value. In response, the company broke down complex processes into key decisions, clarified roles and responsibilities for each one, defined inputs and outputs for each process, and made one person accountable for each outcome. After conducting pilots in several countries, executives used two-day workshops to roll out the process redesign. The resulting benefits included a significant financial boost (as employees used the freed-up time in higher-value ways), as well as an arguably more important boost in employees’ morale and sense of work–life balance, which in turn has helped the company attract and retain talent.

Delegated decisions—make empowerment real

Delegated decisions are generally far narrower in scope than big-bet decisions or cross-cutting ones. They are frequent and relatively routine elements of day-to-day management. But given the multiplier effect, there is a lot of value at stake here, and when the organization’s approach is flawed it’s costly.

In our experience, ensuring that responsibility for delegated decisions is firmly in the hands of those closest to the work typically delivers faster, better, and more efficiently executed outcomes, while also enhancing engagement and accountability.

Our research supports this view. Survey respondents who report that employees at their company are empowered to make decisions and receive sufficient coaching from leaders were 3.2 times more likely than other respondents to also say their company’s delegated decisions were both high quality and speedy.

A vital aspect of empowerment, we find, involves creating an environment where employees can “fail safely.” For example, a European financial-services company we know started a series of monthly, after-work gatherings where leaders could meet over drinks to discuss failure stories and the lessons they’d learned from them. The meetings were purposely kept informal, but top management nonetheless established ground rules to ensure that the stories would be meaningful (not trivial) and that employees telling the stories would be protected. The meetings started small but became popular quickly. Today, a typical session includes 40 to 50 of the company’s top 150 leaders. The climate of trust and openness the sessions encourage has translated into better ideas, including practical lessons that have helped the company speed up its release of new products.

The case for behavioral strategy

As this example suggests, empowerment means not only giving employees a strong sense of ownership and accountability but also fostering a bias for action, especially in situations where time is of the essence. That’s easier said than done if there’s no penalty for avoiding a decision or sanction for escalating issues unnecessarily.

Executives who get delegated decisions right are clear about the boundaries of delegation (including what’s off-limits and how and where to escalate what’s beyond an individual’s competence), ensure that those they entrust with decision-making authority have the relevant skills and knowledge to act (and if not, provide them with the opportunity to acquire those capabilities), and explicitly make people accountable for their areas of decision-making responsibility (including spelling out the consequences for those who fail to respond to the challenge). This often means senior leaders engaging in conversations and dialogue, encouraging those newly empowered to seek help, and in the early days subtly and invisibly monitoring the performance of those participating in “delegated” forums so as not to appear to be taking over. Leaders might want to start mentoring their reports with a small “box” of accountability, slowly expanding it as more junior executives grow in confidence.

For leaders looking to become better delegators, it’s not a question of choosing between a style that is “hands-on” or “hands-off,” or between one that is “controlling” or “empowering.” There’s a balance to be struck. Root out micromanagers who are both hands-on and controlling, as well as “helicopter autocrats” who are hands-off and controlling, occasionally swooping in, barking orders, and disappearing again. But the laissez-faire executive—generally too hands-off, delegating but leaving those with the responsibility too much to their own devices (sometimes with disastrous results)—is also a danger. The ideal in our experience are hands-on and delegating leaders who coach, challenge, and inspire their reports, are there to help those who need help, and stay well clear of actually making the decision.

After the decision: Seek commitment, not unanimous agreement

In his April 2017 letter to Amazon shareholders, CEO Jeff Bezos introduced the concept of “disagree and commit” with respect to decision making. It’s good advice that often goes overlooked. Too frequently, executives charged with making decisions at the three levels discussed earlier leave the meeting assuming that once there’s been a show of hands—or nods of agreement—the job is done. Far from it.

Indeed, any agreement voiced in the absence of a strong sense of collective responsibility can prove ephemeral. This was true at a US-based global financial-services company, where a business-unit leader initially agreed during a committee meeting not to change the fee structure for a key product but later reversed course. The temptation was too great: the fee changes helped the leader’s own business unit—albeit ultimately at the expense of other units whose revenues were cannibalized.

One of the most important characteristics of a good decision is that it’s made in such a way that it will be fully and effectively implemented. That requires commitment, something that is not always straightforward in companies where consensus is a strong part of the culture (and key players acquiesce reluctantly) or after big-bet situations where the vigorous debate we recommended earlier has taken place. At a mining company, real commitment proved difficult because the culture valued “firefighting” behavior. In staff meetings, company executives would quickly agree to take on new tasks because it made them look good in front of the CEO, but they weren’t truly committed to following through. It was only when the leadership team changed this dynamic by focusing on follow-up, execution risks, and bandwidth constraints that execution improved.

While it’s important to devote enough resources to help propel follow-through, and it’s also important to assign accountability for getting things done to an individual or at most a small group of individuals, the biggest challenge is to foster an “all-in” culture that encourages everyone to pull together. That often means involving as many people as possible in the outcome—something that, paradoxically, in the end will enable the decision to be implemented more speedily.

While it’s important to assign accountability for getting things done to an individual, the biggest challenge is to foster an “all-in” culture that encourages everyone to pull together.

Follow the value

There are many keys to better decision making, but in our experience focusing on the three practices discussed here—and on the commitment to implement decisions once taken—can reap early and substantial dividends. This presupposes, of course, that the decisions leaders make at all levels of the organization reflect the company’s strategy and its value-creation agenda. That may seem obvious, but it bears repeating because all too often it simply doesn’t happen. Take the manufacturing company whose operations managers, faced with calls from the sales team to raise production in response to anticipated customer demand, had to consider whether they should spend unbudgeted money on overtime and hiring extra staff. With their bonuses linked exclusively to cost targets, they faced a dilemma. If they took the decision to increase costs and new orders failed to materialize, their remuneration would suffer; if the sales team managed to win new business, the sales representatives would get the kudos, but the operations team would receive no additional credit and no additional reward. Not surprisingly, the operations managers, in their weekly planning meeting, opted not to take the risk, rejected a proposal to set up a new production line, and thereby hindered (albeit inadvertently) the group’s higher growth ambitions. This poor-quality—and in our view avoidable—outcome was the direct result of siloed thinking and a set of narrow incentives in conflict with the group’s broader strategy and value-creation agenda. The underlying management challenge is part of a dynamic we see repeated again and again: when senior executives fail to explore—and then explain—the context and underlying strategic intentions associated with various targets and directives they set, they make unintended consequences inevitable. Worse, the lack of clarity makes it very difficult for colleagues further down in the organization to use their judgment to see past the silos and remedy the situation.

Designing an organization to deliver its strategic objectives—setting a clear mission, aligning incentives—is a big topic and outside the scope of this article. But if different functions and teams do not feel a connection to the bigger picture, the likelihood of executives making good decisions, whether or not they adopt the ideas discussed earlier, is significantly diminished.

Stay current on your favorite topics

Aaron De Smet is a senior partner in McKinsey’s Houston office, Gregor Jost is a partner in the Vienna office, and Leigh Weiss is a senior expert in the Boston office.

The authors wish to thank Iskandar Aminov, Alison Boyd, Elizabeth Foote, Kanika Kakkar, and David Mendelsohn for their contributions to this article.

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Top 10 Decision-making Templates with Samples and Examples

Nidhi Aswal

In today’s business landscape, decisions drive change! Whether a business thrives in competition or languishes at the bottom depends on the quality and promptness of its decision-making.

Making the right decisions (big or small) while operating a business is crucial to success. Instinct-driven decisions might give you results, but data-driven decisions fuel every successful organization.

Using data to base your decisions on is the in-thing today. You’ll never look at Data-Driven Decision-making the same way after using these  15 PowerPoint Templates ! 

With our collection of Decision-making Templates , you can visually outline strategies and invite stakeholders to provide input and contribute. These PPT Sets range from graphs to mind maps and are an absolute must-have for your professional toolkit. 

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Uncover the ultimate solution to your problem-solving and decision-making needs with our expertly crafted 18-slide bundle. Gain a comprehensive grasp of the topic and make informed decisions with ease. Featuring slides with pertinent graphical representations, overviews, subject subtopic presets, and analysis templates are included and ready to be edited, making the product even more valuable. Understand the Kepner-Tregoe Method of situational appraisal in detail with the use of this presentation template. Get it now. 

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With thirteen dynamic presentations, you'll have ample opportunity to explore a diverse range of topics. It helps give an overview and keeps the audience interested when discussing important topics, including decision-making with financial risk evaluation. This PPT Set has a slide that explains the three-step decision-making framework with business goals. It is a resource far too important for you not to have in your toolkit. Get it now.  

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Template 4: Decision-making Matrix Bundles

Building a decision-making matrix isn’t everyone’s cup of tea. This PPT Template is your savior as it helps build effective ones. It has predesigned frameworks that serve as starting point for constructing a solid decision-making matrix for project and client, business operations, recruitment, product ideas, and more. Download now. 

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Template 5: Introduction to Data-driven Decision-making Layout

Use the ideas in this slide to unleash the value and potential of data-driven decision-making. Learn how you can make better business choices using concrete metrics, evident facts, and proper steps. This Data-Driven Decision-Making Layout demonstrates how BI tools in IT can provide you with the knowledge you need to make smarter business choices. Download now.

Template 6: Steps Of Data-driven Decision-making Training Set

This presentation slide describes the process of making decisions based on data. Contextualization, Key Performance Indicators, Visualization, Action Plan, Prioritization of Decision, Execution, Analysis of Results, Learning from Results, and Adjustment of Action Plan are the phases involved. Our team of experts crafted this deck, ensuring that each slide contains relevant and valuable information. Get it today.

Template: 7 Data-driven Decision-making Dashboard 

Here’s a decision-making dashboard that focuses on revenue and customer overview. With insights presented using easy-to-read graphs and charts, making conclusions and strategizing actions become easy. This dashboard highlights average revenue per customer, customer acquisition cost (CAC), CAC vs. customer lifetime value (CLV), and more. Download now.

Template 8: Time Management Benefits of Streamlined Decision-making PPT

This slide highlights the importance of time management in enabling employees to make informed decisions by planning and avoiding last-minute rushes. Understand and internalize the three-step process of managing time and drawing up a schedule; make certain decisions quickly and learn how to make better decisions. An extensive study went into creating this deck's stunning visuals and relevant text. Get it right away.

Template 9: Decision-making Chart PPT Deck

Make your argument clearly with the help of this Decision-making Chart Layout. This resourceful package is adaptable to a broad range of contexts, from product launches and customer purchases to business optimization, construction, and healthcare. You can get all nine slides right now and use them whenever you want. Download now.

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Template: 10 Option-Based Decision-Making Alternative Problem Identification Layout

This PPT Theme explains the four-step decision-making process. Its design promotes appropriate discussion on these four steps that are ‘Identifying the Problem,’ ‘Considering Options,’ ‘Selecting an Alternative,’ and ‘Addressing the Effectiveness of the Decision.’ Similarly, our PPT Bundle has slides that offer additional steps that complement the above points, ensuring a more comprehensive approach to decision-making. Download now.

Decide, Deliver, Dazzle

In the realm of decision-making, your presentations need to pack a punch. With our game-changing Decision-Making PPT Templates, you hold the key to captivating your audience, sealing the deal, and leaving a lasting impression. Don't settle for mediocrity when you can soar with excellence. Elevate your presentations to new heights and embrace success with our powerful templates. The choice is yours—make it count!

FAQs on Decision-Making

What are decision-making types.

The four main types of decision-making are:

• Command: Decisions using the command approach are made alone, without consulting or any discussion with others. These options are fraught with unpredictability.
• Consult: In the consultation approach, many people are consulted, but only one person has the authority to make a final choice. 
• Vote: The voting method takes place when everyone can voice their opinion before the speaker calls for a vote. 
• Consensus: By sharing their ideas and listening to those of others, group members, using the consensus approach, eventually come to a decision.

What are the five keys of decision-making?

Here are the five keys to decision-making:

Identification

First, decide what you want. Why are you making that choice? Why is it necessary? Identifying objectives clarifies the situation and aids decision-making.

Seek advice from  the wisest in the group

You don't have to solve everything, even if you're the boss. Talk to someone who has made a similar choice. You must decide whether to fire a talented employee who is outstanding with clients but frequently late or absent. An experienced businessperson can advise you.

Take a call

Determine the proper course of action before making any practical decisions.

Put your plans into action.

Collect information on what's working and what's not.

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7 Easy ways to create decision-making presentations with the help of AI.

David Lavalle | 14 July, 2023

• Introduction

Why are decision-making presentations important for businesses and other domains?

• Take Advantage of the AI-powered presentations today!.
• Every once in a while, we get the opportunity to fascinate someone. It can be anyone, your boss, your team, a sponsor, a benefactor, a group of students, or just random people whom you need to build trust with. You can easily captivate and persuade anyone with your ideas through a well-crafted decision-making presentation!
• At  WeSlides , we create compelling templates and carefully articulated decision-making presentations for the satisfaction of our users. Coming up with an idea and thinking of ways to implement it is hard enough, and you shouldn’t have to waste any precious time dragging and zooming text boxes, fixing font sizes, and stressing over a color theme.
• You can leave the rest to us and focus more on how you would like to present your work. Today, you will get to explore how AI technology can change the way people perceive and react just by adding a few tweaks here and there.

Convincing others is a tough job especially when there’s money at stake. However, using an AI presentation maker can change your prospects of gaining success by a huge percentage.

• Time-Saving

Time is your best friend when it comes to achieving your goals. It can be stubborn and slow for Some but favoring and fast for others. Just think, when it comes to decision-making presentations, it will be nothing but a gift in disguise even if you’re running late! That’s the beauty of having a variety of decision-making presentation templates at the tip of your fingers. Get ahead of time and let the AI tool take care of writing styles, dragging around stuff, building color schemes, and enhancing the viability of your project, particularly when delivering those all-important decision-making presentations.

• Collaborating

These presentations can give you the opportunity to collectively discuss matters with your team and propose better options in the future. It is an excellent way for your team to collectively analyze presented data, statistics, and money management through AI-based presentations.

• Influential

You can never persuade someone without influencing them. A decision-making presentation covers that for you. Gaining support from your audience is your main purpose which is completely fulfilled by using these AI tools.

• Documentation

You can go over these presentations powered by AI a hundred times if you want. You get to store them on the cloud or share it with the world. In return you get full transparency for your audience, references for future analysis, and the option to review and renew anytime!

The 7 ways you can create decision-making presentations.

• Use Natural Language Processing for generating content in decision-making presentations.

Gone are the days when we had to learn the language of zeros and ones to give instructions to a machine/computer. Today you can type your command and let the machine interpret it for you. That’s what an NLP is, and you can utilize it to produce a coherent outcome.

You just punch in a topic, even something complex like decision-making presentations, and it will generate content, summarize it accordingly, and present it to you highlighting the key points as well. A perfect partner for making informed choices. It can also be used as a research tool that can extract data from every nook and corner of the internet with a factual guarantee.

You won’t even have to worry about making your words sound professional, informal/formal, or attractive because an AI PowerPoint presentation maker will also do that for you.

• Get help from visuals to enhance decision-making presentations.

Create exciting and impactful presentations by adding special visual effects .

Colors are more important than you think. That’s why decision-making presentations also help you visualize your output by carving out color themes and palettes according to the topic you provide. It can also be a great tool to psychologically impact the people listening to you. Warm colors instill happiness in the subconscious while dark colors strike mystery, power, and elegance.

The color theme can also play an important role in building your company’s brand color or logo. You can also choose different shades or tints for the same color scheme to portray different aspects of an enterprise’s focus.

Apply predictive analysis and forecast the results while creating decision-making presentations.

You can be at ease with this one because AI develops the path for you including your vision. It’s worth noting that these features are especially handy for crafting decision-making presentations. It will also give you valuable advice along the way and predict possible outcomes. With hundreds of templates available at WeSlides , you can just dial in all the information you have and allow the AI tool to build subtopics and generate a separate section for each topic!

• Leverage AI tools to present well-researched and in-depth information.

With the machine’s judgment and probability of success, you have more focus on communicating with the audience.

Digging out algorithms, unstructured articles, research, graphical representations, reports, sources, and leads and binding them together to build a compelling decision-making presentation can make your workload heavier, thus you should consider utilizing the AI tools to their full extent to blow off some steam.

When you have too much information at hand, you can become stressed out trying to prove it correct. With AI tools you can be a hundred percent assured that all the data and information is factually congruent with your topic.

• Get creative with personalizing your decision-making presentations.

You know your audience best and you have to cater to their needs. Since AI does not have any emotional intelligence, it cannot create an exact replica of what you have in mind. This is where you have the leverage to customize and re-create any template or slide you deem fit.

Feel free to alter the tone of the content, manipulate the use of language, or change font types and sizes. You may also modify some of the information in the text. After all, a machine can’t surpass human intelligence. It’s your unique perspective and approach that will give the text the distinctive touch it needs.

• Collaborate with your team and produce a mutually structured decision-making presentation.

Don’t get stuck with emailing the same thing to your colleagues over and over again. Use AI-based presentations to come together with your team without being present in the same room.

You can post comments on each slide, set reminders, and even chat while making the presentation. Get the confusion out of your hair and communicate with your team effectively.

You can even share your work on social media and view the response rate through the analytics tool . This will provide you with commendable feedback and showcase your weak points so you and your enterprise can enhance them in the future.

• Overcome language barriers and use AI to develop highly interactive decision-making presentations.

Presenting on an international level or educating people in their native language can be tough when creating decision-making presentations because of non-fluency.

However, AI does not have any language barriers. It can respond to any language even if written in slang. You can create your presentation in the native language of your audience or even add a few slides in between with slogans/sayings with their translations to entice traditional values in your viewers.

You can also utilize this tool to extract information from an unknown language to you and present it in the language you are familiar with or the other way around.

Take Advantage of the AI-powered presentations today!

Hope this triggered the innovator inside you, and you are now fully informed of all the ways you can create a decision-making presentation! Artificial Intelligence has made our lives so much easier and more beautiful, yet people are afraid of making the right move.

Work smarter, not harder by multi-tasking with a virtual assistant. You can put all the monotonous, brain-teasing tasks on the shoulders of your AI business presentation maker and exercise delivering your ideas to build rapport with your spectators.

In today’s world, an AI that makes PowerPoint presentations is the only ligament that saves us time, effort, energy, and useless meetings on who gets to create what part of a presentation. You can run a whole organization or just be fine with a one-man show, weslides.com will make sure to give you a gratifying outcome with defying results in the end.

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Presentations for Decision Makers, 3rd Edition 3rd Edition

Presentations for Decision Makers shows you how to use new technology to your advantage, provides guidelines for learning about different cultural mores you may encounter, and considers how to recognize and relate to people with differences in thinking styles in a meeting. It addresses each step in the process, from planning the presentation through creating visuals, rehearsing, preparing for questions, and managing participation in formal, informal, and video conference settings. You will come away with clear, effective strategies for getting your message across.

Features new to the 3rd Edition are:

• Tips for making the most of new presentation technologies
• How-to information on presenting to an international audience
• Checklists to gauge the effectiveness of your presentation
• Focusing on the audience
• Criteria for solving the problem and conveying the message
• Building a logical structure
• Designing the presentation
• Creating compelling visual aids
• Setting the stage
• Rehearsing and delivering the presentation
• Managing audience participation
• Persuading people in informal meetings, negotiations, and one-on-one
• Speaking in public
• Videoconferencing
• Presenting globally
• ISBN-10 0471287652
• ISBN-13 978-0471287650
• Edition 3rd
• Publisher Wiley
• Publication date September 13, 1996
• Language English
• Dimensions 6.04 x 1.13 x 9.33 inches
• Print length 336 pages
• See all details

Editorial Reviews

From the inside flap.

• A companion disk containing templates for computer-generated presentations

From the Back Cover

About the author, product details.

• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Wiley; 3rd edition (September 13, 1996)
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 336 pages
• ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0471287652
• ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0471287650
• Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.5 pounds
• Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6.04 x 1.13 x 9.33 inches
• #49,384 in Leadership & Motivation
• #61,835 in Business & Finance
• #410,040 in Unknown

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Marya w. holcombe.

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Organizational Data Culture: Linking Decision-Making Styles to Data Maturity by Suzannah Hicks

About the speaker.

By Suzannah Hicks

This presentation will delve into the relationship between an organization’s decision-making style and its data maturity level, and how this impacts the adoption of an organizational data culture. Led by AI Strategist Suzannah Hicks, the session will define key concepts such as organizational decision-making styles and data maturity level assessments, highlighting the measurement instruments used in the primary research.

Relying on primary research conducted by the presenter, the presentation will reveal the correlations found between decision-making styles and data maturity levels. Additionally, it will shed light on the challenges organizations may face when their decision-making style is not aligned with their data maturity level.

The presentation concludes with practical strategies for organizations to cultivate a strong data culture, enhance their data maturity, and ultimately make more informed, data-driven decisions. Join us to gain valuable insights and actionable advice on aligning your organization’s decision-making processes with its data maturity journey.

Suzannah Hicks, AI Strategist, Merchants Fleet

Suzannah Hicks is the AI Strategist for Merchants Fleet, North America’s fastest-growing fleet management company. She leads AI strategy and development, including solution development, data governance, and AI literacy programs. Suzannah is completing her doctorate in Business Administration – Organizational Development, with a dissertation titled “Adoption of an Organizational Data Culture: Applying the Theory of Diffusion of Innovations to Drive Organizational Change.”

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Research on role of local partners in programme-level decision-making.

About Trócaire

Trócaire is the official overseas development agency of the Catholic Church in Ireland. Trócaire was established to express the concern of the Irish Catholic Church for any form of human need, but particularly for the needs and challenges faced by communities in the global south. Together with our partners, we work towards supporting women, men and communities for long-term change. In Ireland, we raise awareness about the causes of poverty through our outreach programmes in the education sector, through parish networks, and through our public campaigns and advocacy work. More information about Trócaire is available at www.trocaire.org .

Context of Work

Trócaire has worked in partnership with local organisations in the countries where we work for nearly 50 years. As a partnership agency, Trócaire is committed to the ‘Localisation of Aid’ agenda [1] , aimed at shifting greater power to local actors and ensuring that development and humanitarian programmes are locally-led*.* Trócaire is also a signatory to the Grand Bargain and Charter4Change, two of the key international instruments focused on advancing the localisation agenda. To deliver on these commitments, Trócaire established a Global Hub on Partnership & Localisation in March 2021. Based in Nairobi and working across the organisation globally, the Hub works to deepen Trócaire’s approaches to and expertise in partnership and localisation, as outlined in its Partnership and Localisation Strategy (2021-2025) [2] . Trócaire’s localisation approach focuses on four outcome areas: 1) Increased voice and influence of local actors, 2) Effective capacity strengthening, 3) Equitable partner relationships, and 4) Increased access to funding and resources for local partners.

While a significant portion of the initial discourse on localisation was focused on the commitments relating to increased direct funding to local actors, there is an increasing recognition of localisation as a process to enable locally-led programming [3] . Fundamental to the idea of locally-led programming is the ability for local actors to take a leading role in shaping key decisions in the programme cycle. This is reflected in the approaches and commitments of various actors and forums focused on localisation, some of which are noted below -

• The Grand Bargain Intermediaries Caucus outcome document calls on intermediary INGOs to “ensure that local/national actors play a more prominent and more visible/active role in programme/project steering”, and proposes measuring this through the representation of local and national actors in programme steering committees and demonstrated participation in planning and decision-making [4] .
• The NEAR network’s Localisation Performance Measurement Framework includes an indicator on assessing the engagement of local partners throughout the project cycle in its ‘Partnership’ component. [5]
• In its approach to localisation, USAID has identified two main indicators to measure progress. While one is focused on funding, the other looks to ensure that its “programming will place local communities in the lead to co-design a project, set priorities, drive implementation, and/or evaluate the impact of our programs. [6] ”
• DG ECHO’s Guidance on Promoting Equitable Partnerships includes a commitment to “ensuring the participation of local/national actors throughout the humanitarian response cycle” as one of its five main areas of focus. [7]

Trócaire’s ambition is for local actors to not only participate in, but lead programme-level decision-making where relevant and appropriate. One of the commitments under the Outcome 3 of Trócaire’s Partnership and Localisation Strategy (Equitable Partnerships) is to ensure a leading role for local partners throughout the programme cycle, including the planning, design, implementation, and monitoring of projects. In Trócaire’s last Partner Feedback Survey (conducted once every two years), one of the areas of improvement identified by the recommendations was to enhance partners’ ability to influence decisions within Trócaire. Partners did not strongly perceive that they had equal or greater decision-making power than Trócaire in designing programme budgets. Partners agreed to a limited extent that they had equal or greater decision-making power throughout the programme cycle, and in designing programme activities and action plans, however there was room for improvement. This was also noted as an area requiring attention in Trócaire’s mid-term review of the ongoing strategic plan [8] , which identifies localisation as one of the key shifts Trócaire has committed to.

This consultancy is aimed at addressing these findings from the partner survey by examining the dynamics of programme-level decision-making within Trócaire more closely and providing recommendations to enable our local partners to have a greater role in shaping programme decisions. While Trócaire recognizes that there can be different types of local actors engaged in decision-making during the programme cycle, this study focuses on the involvement of Trócaire’s local partners, who are predominantly local or national NGOs or CSOs. The study may briefly reflect on the involvement of affected local communities in programme-level decision-making, but this is not its primary focus.

This research is funded by Irish Aid, under the ongoing ICSP programme. In ICSP, Trócaire have undertaken to develop learning plans centred around several initiatives taking place under the four programme goals and Trócaire’s Global Hub on Partnership and Localisation. The learning plans place an emphasis on learning for decision-making and adaptation of programmes during the lifetime of the grant.

The overarching purpose of this consultancy is to support Trócaire to deliver on its commitment to equitable partnerships by enabling greater voice and decision-making ability for our local partners at the programme level. To this end, this study will explore the perspectives and experiences of Trócaire’s partners regarding their engagement in the programme-level decision making processes, along with analysing Trócaire’s current practices and internal guidance on programme cycle management, and relevant donor conditions and requirements that affect partners’ ability to influence programmes. It seeks to answer the following questions –

• What are the key decisions and decision-making moments relevant to Trócaire's partners in the programme cycle, and to what extent are they currently able to influence these decisions?
• What are the barriers and enablers to partners being able to shape programme-level decision-making?
• What actions or changes are needed to be made by Trócaire, donors and partners themselves for partners to be able to meaningfully influence decisions throughout the programme cycle?

Scope of the Work

Trócaire’s relationship with local organisations is shaped by virtue of its identity as both, a partnership agency, as well as an ‘international intermediary’ in the context of localisation. As a partnership organisation, Trócaire has a long history and deep-rooted ethos of working through empowering relationships with local civil society organisations, based on the core values of solidarity, participation and subsidiarity from Catholic Social Teaching. It has processes and guidelines in place to ensure that our local partners are key stakeholders throughout the programme cycle.

On the other hand, as an ‘international intermediary', Trócaire’s interactions with local actors are also shaped by the varying requirements and stipulations of its institutional “back donors”. The extent that local partners are engaged in and influence the planning and design of programmes and budgets is often determined by the timelines and unique parameters of each funding opportunity, varying donor practices as well as Trócaire's own internal requirements. In addition, as an international NGO and in most cases, the budget holder, Trócaire recognizes there are power dynamics at play in our interactions with local organisations which can shape discussions and affect key programme decisions.

The consultancy will be expected to analyse these dynamics in the programme cycles of a selection of Trócaire’s recent institutional funding grants across different donors, countries and programme areas. The entry point for the final report is localisation, and to what extent Trócaire’s existing policies and practices on programme cycle management vary across contexts and enable or impede our commitment to ensuring partners are able to not only participate in, but lead programme-level decision-making.

To this end, the consultant will be expected to deliver the following -

• Based on a literature review of internal and donor policies and grant documentation, a light quantitative survey, as well as interviews and/or focus group discussions with partners and Trócaire staff, identify and map the key decision-making moments and governance structures within the programme cycle across the grants sampled for this research. (The sampling will be determined by Trócaire and aim to have representation of Trócaire’s largest institutional donors, the countries it operates in, and the thematic focus areas of its programmes.)
• Analyse the processes and power dynamics within these decision-making moments and structures to determine to what extent Trócaire’s local partners are able to have a leading role in shaping key decisions relevant to the programme across its various stages, including the initial conception, design, implementation, monitoring and evaluation, close-out and reporting as well as decisions on the programme budget.
• Identify key barriers, enablers and examples of good practice in terms of ensuring that the voices of local partners are able to shape programme-level decision-making.
• Provide recommendations, including practical steps for i) Trócaire, ii) relevant institutional donors, and iii) local partners to enable greater leadership by local partners in programme-level decision-making across different contexts.

The final report will be a learning document that will inform Trócaire’s approach and practice for promoting the leadership of our partners in programme cycle management. While the final report is intended to be an internal product, the recommendations for donors will inform Trócaire’s broader advocacy on localisation.

It is anticipated the study will cover a total of 4-5 institutional grants from Trócaire’s most significant institutional donors across 3-4 countries. All engagements with Trócaire staff and local partners from the countries can be conducted virtually. The consultant will not be expected to engage with members of affected communities.

Methodology

The consultant is expected to provide a detailed proposal, indicating the methodologies that will be used for conducting the research and developing a final report in line with the objectives and scope of the terms of reference. The proposal will be expected to clarify the research framework, the data to be collected, how it will be collected, and the broad timeframe of the project. In particular, the consultant will be expected to suggest a proposed methodology and/or theoretical framework for analysing the power dynamics between Trócaire and local partners during key decision-making moments in the programme cycle.

The study design should incorporate a participatory approach, capturing views of Trócaire and partner staff at the head office (if required) and country level. The consultant will not be expected to engage directly with affected communities. The assignment is expected to be conducted remotely, however there is a possibility to consider in-person engagement if required by the methodology.

The methodology is broadly expected to include the steps provided below. The proposal will be expected to adapt and provide further detail on these based on the consultant’s proposed approach.

• Inception meeting with relevant Trócaire staff, including Trócaire’s Global Director-Partnership and Localisation, Partnership and Localisation Adviser, Global Knowledge Management & Learning Advisor, relevant staff from Trócaire's Global Partnerships and Funding Unit, relevant staff from country teams including Programme Managers, MEAL Advisors and any other Trócaire staff, as required.
• Development of an inception report with the final research methodology and timelines, as agreed with the Trócaire team.
• Review of relevant literature on localisation, including documents listed in the footnotes of this TOR, as well as the Grand Bargain 3.0 self-reporting guidance and indicators.
• Trócaire’s Partner Feedback Survey 2022 Global Report, and country specific reports as necessary, Keystone Partner Survey Report 2020 and Trócaire's mid-term strategic plan review.
• Review of relevant internal guidance or resources published by Trócaire’s Global Partnerships and Funding Unit, particularly on grant management based on the institutional grants and donors included in the research sample.
• Review of relevant internal guidance or resources on Programme Cycle Management such as Trócaire’s Partnership Policy, Global MEAL Policy and linked resources, Humanitarian Handbook, Programme Cycle Management Development Programme,, and other resources, as necessary.
• Review of relevant calls for proposals, donor requirements for the projects included in the study.
• Review of the relevant, key project documentation for the projects included in the study, such as the final proposals, results framework, monitoring reports, minutes of steering committee/project review meetings, narrative reports, etc.
• Any other documentation required by the final methodology.
• Development, review and finalisation of survey tool for quantitative data collection: The main objective of the survey will be to identify the process of partner engagement and key decision-making moments during the programme cycle from the perspective of partners and Trócaire staff across all country teams, and get preliminary insights on partner experiences.
• Data collection based on methodology and tools agreed with the Trócaire team and analysis of findings.
• Development, review and finalisation of qualitative data collection tools: The qualitative methodology could include focus group discussions, key informant interviews, or other qualitative methods designed to reflect on the nature of power dynamics involved in selected decision-making processes. The data collection methodology should allow for anonymity or confidentiality of respondents, particularly for partners.
• Data collection based on the methodology and tools agreed with the Trócaire team: The main source of qualitative information will be relevant staff from Trócaire’s country teams and local partner organisations. Supplementary interviews with Trócaire’s HQ staff may be included if required.
• Data analysis and drafting.
• Presentation of preliminary findings: The consultant will be expected to share preliminary findings with relevant Trócaire and partner staff through a validation meeting and incorporate feedback as necessary into the final report.
• Report writing and review: Trócaire and its partners should have an opportunity to review the final written report in full and provide feedback prior to finalisation. Time should be factored in for Trócaire and partners to review and for the consultant to make revisions based on Trócaire and partners’ feedback.
• Finalisation of the report: The final report should be provided as a word document and PDF of maximum 25 pages (excluding annexes) and should include an executive summary.

The consultancy is expected to require a maximum of 30 consultancy days. It is planned to be carried out tentatively between July to October 2024.

Final Products

• Inception report to be submitted following the inception meeting.
• Final study report, including executive summary, of maximum 30 pages (excluding annexes).
• Powerpoint presentation with the key findings and recommendations.

The submitted final products will require the final review and approval by Trócaire for the consultancy to be brought to conclusion.

[1] Trócaire, 2017. More Than The Money: Localisation in Practice.

[2] Trócaire, 2021. Partnership and Localisation Strategy .

[3] ODI, 2021. Are we there yet? Localisation as the journey towards locally-led practice .

[4] Grand Bargain, 2022. Towards Co-Ownership: The Role of Intermediaries in Supporting Locally-Led Humanitarian Action .

[5] NEAR, 2019. Localisation performance measurement Framework.

[6] USAID, 2022. Localization at USAID: The vision and approach .

[7] EU/DG ECHO, 2023. Promoting Equitable Partnerships with Local Responders in Humanitarian Settings.

[8] Trócaire Strategic Plan 2021-2025: https://www.trocaire.org/documents/trocaire-strategic-plan-2021-2025/

Experience/Skills

Applicants must demonstrate they meet the following requirements:

• Excellent understanding of the localisation discourse and its evolution. Prior experience of conducting research or documenting learning on localisation is preferred.
• Excellent understanding of key theories and methodologies for assessing power dynamics in humanitarian and development programming. Prior experience of conducting research or practice of methodologies addressing power dynamics will be an advantage.
• Relevant professional experience and technical knowledge to carry out the intended research and report writing.
• Advanced degree in a related field of study (for example, development studies, public policy, social sciences, or a related field).
• Excellent English writing skills (including reports and publications).
• Proficient spoken English language skills.
• Experience working with international, national and local NGOs and community-based organisations.
• Excellent time management skills, with an ability to deliver high-quality outputs on time.
• Commitment to the safeguarding of programme participants, as demonstrated by signing Trócaire’s Safeguarding Programme Participants Policy.
• Proficiency in spoken Spanish will be an advantage.
• Researchers or organisations based in the Global South are particularly encouraged to apply.

Safeguarding

All consultants who work for Trócaire will be required to sign and abide by Trócaire’s official position statement on exploitation and abuse, including zero-tolerance for sexual exploitation and abuse . Trócaire recognises that abuse of power has led, and continues to lead, to many forms of exploitation and abuse. The nature of Trócaire’s work creates a power differential between those employed by or working with Trócaire and programme participants and partners. Trócaire acknowledges that the potential exists for those who work with programme participants and partners to abuse their position of power. Trócaire’s commitment to safeguarding is inclusive of its staff and all those with whom it comes into contact through its work.

Evaluation of proposals

Each technical proposal will be evaluated based on technical quality; background and experience of the consultant; and value for money.

How to apply

Identified consultants should submit a proposal marked “Partner-led Decision-Making Research” by e-mail to [email protected] latest by 12th June 2024.

Proposals should include the following:

• The CV of the consultant(s), outlining relevant experience, accomplishments, and contact information of 2 references.
• A written proposal, outlining the methodology, work plan and detailed budget, including the estimated number of days per deliverable and daily rate in Euro. (Maximum 6 pages)
• Conflict of interest statement: Applicants should state clearly whether they have an actual or potential conflict of interest with the staff, volunteers, and/or board of Trócaire.
• 2 writing samples of similar/relevant work.

Any queries relating to this Terms of Reference should be directed by e-mail only to Ruchi Junnarkar ([email protected]).

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Streamlining processes and standing up HR operations with PwC’s Total Workforce Management solution

From acquisition to autonomy: how a tech company transformed its workforce

• May 29, 2024

A regional tech company faced the challenge of establishing a new company after an acquisition, while also scaling its workforce. To avoid costly transition services agreements (TSAs) and preserve deal value, it needed a rapid HR system separation. The company worked with PwC to swiftly move its enterprise-wide HR operations to SAP and stand up its own system. The solution provides unprecedented visibility across the organization and empowers leadership to make data-driven decisions that improve employee experience.

Regional Tech Company

time and pay accuracy after converting enterprise data from legacy systems over to SAP

faster than industry standard timeline to implement SAP SuccessFactors and Fieldglass for 6,000+ employees and contractors

HR TSAs required post-divestiture, despite accounting for HR and tax nuances in 35 states and 25+ employee unions, which helped preserve deal value

A human-led, tech-powered workforce transformation enables transparency and helps build trust with stakeholders

PwC shares the path to operational efficiency

What was the challenge.

The challenge was managing rapid change amid a complex acquisition . The client needed to physically separate the HR, payroll and operations systems of its newly acquired company to avoid relying on the former owner’s tech infrastructure via costly TSAs.

Speed was key. The goal was to stand up the new systems as quickly as possible without a significant impact on either company’s daily operations, which span 35 states. Simultaneously, the team also had to onboard thousands of employees overnight, causing a rapid scaling of the HR organization.

Describe the solution delivered by the PwC community of solvers

PwC’s Total Workforce Management solution powered by SAP was chosen to streamline HR processes and manage all related operations. This comprehensive, cloud-based HR suite integrates modules like S/4HANA, SuccessFactors and Fieldglass to efficiently handle talent management, learning, recruitment, timekeeping, finance (including financial planning and analysis) and contractor management. The automation tools and data cleansing enabled a smooth transition under a tight deadline, along with accurate financial data posting and streamlined payment processing for both contractors and over 25 employee unions across the business.

Transitions of this magnitude typically take at least 12 to 15 months, but PwC did it in 9 months. The client now has great operational efficiency and workforce management capabilities.

How does the solution blend the strengths of technology and people?

Despite the time constraints, PwC quickly implemented Total Workforce Management and the Experience Suite framework . This is a digital SuccessFactors-driven solution that provides tools to enhance employee upskilling, labor sourcing and localized people management. The solution simplified governance, improved visibility and empowered smarter decisions as the organization grew. Within the Experience Suite, you could see exactly what the system build would look like via a test environment, incorporating standardized practices to meet the deadline as an independent company.

Where or how did innovation and unexpected ways of thinking come into play?

PwC’s Experience Suite framework provided a practical and efficient approach to setting up a new system. This included leading practices and pre-built models based on PwC’s extensive experience with SAP SuccessFactors and Fieldglass implementations. It streamlined project management, reduced decision-making time and minimized complexities. PwC’s fit-to-standard approach also helped provide a standard system setup and HR enhancements to simplify the implementation process. The team’s innovative solutions truly made a difference in the workforce transformation journey.

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Jury in Trump’s Trial Rehears Testimony and Judge’s Instructions

The jurors’ requests included specific testimony from David Pecker, the former publisher of The National Enquirer, and Michael D. Cohen, Donald J. Trump’s former fixer.

• Share full article

By Matthew Haag

• May 30, 2024

On the second day of deliberations in the criminal trial of Donald J. Trump, the jury revisited words uttered earlier in the courtroom, then retreated again behind closed doors to continue their work.

The 12 jurors heard on Thursday morning a rereading of testimony from the seven-week trial by two key witnesses as well as a portion of the judge’s lengthy instructions as they continued to consider his legal fate.

The jury asked for the reprise in two notes delivered to Justice Juan M. Merchan a day earlier after discussing the case among themselves for a few hours, then continued those conversations on Thursday as they labored to decide the first criminal trial of an American president.

Mr. Trump is charged with 34 counts of falsifying business records related to the coverup of a $130,000 hush-money payment that was made to a porn star in the days leading to the 2016 election.

The jurors have heard weeks of salacious testimony and accusations of a fraud on voters. It was unclear what exactly their inquiries revealed about what was happening in the room where they are deliberating , which is off a small hallway in the Manhattan Criminal Courthouse.

Nor did the requests signal how much longer they would take to issue a verdict in what is most likely the only one of four criminal cases against him that will go to trial before Election Day.

But the reason that the jurors might have wanted to hear excerpts from the 55-page jury instructions again seems evident: New York law does not explicitly allow them to have written copies . A 1987 court decision reaffirmed that rule.

That court found that “the distribution of written instructions to the jury is not expressly authorized by law, and error in such submissions cannot be deemed harmless,” meaning that providing the instructions would result in a conviction being overturned.

Judge Merchan read about two dozen pages out loud again on Thursday, specifically reciting the section on inferences they could make from testimony and evidence. He offered an example: If the sidewalk is wet in the morning, he told them, you may infer it rained overnight.

The testimony that Mr. Trump’s jurors requested to hear were from key witnesses called by prosecutors — the first and last witnesses to testify for them — and the two who spent the most time on the stand.

They were David Pecker, the former publisher of The National Enquirer, who revealed private conversations with Mr. Trump during the 2016 campaign, and Michael D. Cohen, Mr. Trump’s former fixer who was the prosecution’s star witness.

Mr. Pecker, who took the stand first, provided testimony over several days that laid the foundation for the prosecution. The bookend of the prosecution’s case was Mr. Cohen, who told the jury about one-on-one conversations with Mr. Trump about burying unflattering stories about him through hush deals.

Both spoke about working during Mr. Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign to suppress damaging headlines about Mr. Trump while promoting negative stories about his political rivals. Prosecutors described the effort as a conspiracy to influence the outcome of the election, all hidden from public view.

At the heart of that effort as well as the criminal case was the $130,000 hush-money payment made by Mr. Cohen to Stormy Daniels, an adult film actress who said she had sex with Mr. Trump in 2006. She testified about that encounter, which Mr. Trump has always denied.

Prosecutors charged Mr. Trump with falsifying business records stemming from Mr. Trump’s reimbursement to Mr. Cohen, saying he disguised the repayment as ordinary legal expenses.

In two days of deliberations, the jurors have sent three requests to Judge Merchan. On Thursday, they asked for headphones to listen to evidence on a court-provided computer.

The requests made by the jury did make clear they wanted to hear key testimony again on events that prosecutors have argued were central to the conspiracy to influence Mr. Trump’s campaign. Specifically, they wanted to know more about an August 2015 meeting on the 26th Floor of Trump Tower in Manhattan.

It was there, according to prosecutors, that the conspiracy was hatched. Mr. Trump had announced his candidacy a few months earlier in the tower’s lobby.

At Mr. Cohen’s request, Mr. Pecker testified, he traveled to the gilded Fifth Avenue tower, where Mr. Cohen and Mr. Trump asked him how his magazines could help Mr. Trump’s campaign. They had a lengthy symbiotic relationship dating back to when Mr. Trump hosted the popular reality television show “The Apprentice.”

But now, Mr. Pecker said, Mr. Trump wanted his help to make him president of the United States. Mr. Pecker agreed to assist. On the stand, Mr. Cohen corroborated his account.

“That if we can place positive stories about Mr. Trump, that would be beneficial,” Mr. Cohen said on the stand. “That if we could place negative stories about some of the other candidates, that would also be beneficial.”

Nearly a year later, Mr. Pecker and his publication heard about a former Playboy model who had a story to sell about a 10-month affair with Mr. Trump starting in 2006. Jurors asked to hear Mr. Pecker’s testimony again about a call with Mr. Trump about the woman, Karen McDougal.

Mr. Pecker had been giving a presentation at a meeting of investors in June 2016 involving the tabloid’s parent company, American Media Inc., when he was interrupted by a phone call from Mr. Trump. Mr. Pecker said that he stepped away to talk to Mr. Trump, who suggested that he knew Ms. McDougal.

“Karen is a nice girl,” Mr. Trump said, according to Mr. Pecker. “What do you think I should do?” Mr. Pecker said he answered that Mr. Trump should buy Ms. McDougal’s story.

A.M.I. later paid her $150,000.

The payment was structured to appear as a legitimate business deal, Mr. Pecker testified, and to avoid violating campaign finance law. But the company later admitted doing just that in a 2018 nonprosecution agreement with federal prosecutors.

Mr. Pecker said The Enquirer had no intention of printing Ms. McDougal’s account of an affair.

Matthew Haag writes about the intersection of real estate and politics in the New York region. He has been a journalist for two decades. More about Matthew Haag

Our Coverage of the Trump Hush-Money Trial

Guilty Verdict : Donald Trump was convicted on all 34 counts  of falsifying records to cover up a sex scandal that threatened his bid for the White House in 2016, making him the first American president to be declared a felon .

What Happens Next: Trump’s sentencing hearing on July 11 will trigger a long and winding appeals process , though he has few ways to overturn the decision .

Reactions: Trump’s conviction reverberated quickly across the country  and around the world . Here’s what voters , New Yorkers , Republicans , Trump supporters  and President Biden  had to say.

The Presidential Race : The political fallout of Trump’s conviction is far from certain , but the verdict will test America’s traditions, legal institutions and ability to hold an election under historic partisan tension .

Making the Case: Over six weeks and the testimony of 20 witnesses, the Manhattan district attorney’s office wove a sprawling story  of election interference and falsified business records.

Legal Luck Runs Out: The four criminal cases that threatened Trump’s freedom had been stumbling along, pleasing his advisers. Then his good fortune expired .