problem solving and decision making in leadership

Problem-solving in Leadership: How to Master the 5 Key Skills

The role of problem-solving in enhancing team morale, the right approach to problem-solving in leadership, developing problem-solving skills in leadership, leadership problem-solving examples.

Other Related Blogs

What’s the Role of Problem-solving in Leadership?

• Getting to the root of the issue:  First, Sarah starts by looking at the numbers for the past few months. She identifies the products for which sales are falling. She then attempts to correlate it with the seasonal nature of consumption or if there is any other cause hiding behind the numbers. 
• Identifying the sources of the problem:  In the next step, Sarah attempts to understand why sales are falling. Is it the entry of a new competitor in the next neighborhood, or have consumption preferences changed over time? She asks some of her present and past customers for feedback to get more ideas. 
• Putting facts on the table:  Next up, Sarah talks to her sales team to understand their issues. They could be lacking training or facing heavy workloads, impacting their productivity. Together, they come up with a few ideas to improve sales. 
• Selection and application:  Finally, Sarah and her team pick up a few ideas to work on after analyzing their costs and benefits. They ensure adequate resources, and Sarah provides support by guiding them wherever needed during the planning and execution stage. 
• Identifying the root cause of the problem.
• Brainstorming possible solutions.
• Evaluating those solutions to select the best one.
• Implementing it.

• Analytical thinking:   Analytical thinking skills refer to a leader’s abilities that help them analyze, study, and understand complex problems. It allows them to dive deeper into the issues impacting their teams and ensures that they can identify the causes accurately. 
• Critical Thinking:  Critical thinking skills ensure leaders can think beyond the obvious. They enable leaders to question assumptions, break free from biases, and analyze situations and facts for accuracy. 
• Creativity:  Problems are often not solved straightaway. Leaders need to think out of the box and traverse unconventional routes. Creativity lies at the center of this idea of thinking outside the box and creating pathways where none are apparent. 
• Decision-making:  Cool, you have three ways to go. But where to head? That’s where decision-making comes into play – fine-tuning analysis and making the choices after weighing the pros and cons well. 
• Effective Communication:  Last but not at the end lies effective communication that brings together multiple stakeholders to solve a problem. It is an essential skill to collaborate with all the parties in any issue. Leaders need communication skills to share their ideas and gain support for them.

How do Leaders Solve Problems?

Business turnaround, crisis management, team building.

Process improvement

Ace performance reviews with strong feedback skills..

Master the art of constructive feedback by reviewing your skills with a free assessment now.

Why is problem solving important?

What is problem-solving skills in management, how do you develop problem-solving skills.

Top 15 Tips for Effective Conflict Mediation at Work

Top 10 games for negotiation skills to make you a better leader, manager effectiveness: a complete guide for managers in 2024, 5 proven ways managers can build collaboration in a team.

• Browse Topics
• Executive Committee
• Affiliated Faculty
• Harvard Negotiation Project
• Great Negotiator
• American Secretaries of State Project
• Awards, Grants, and Fellowships
• Negotiation Programs
• Mediation Programs
• One-Day Programs
• In-House Training – Inquiry Form
• In-Person Programs
• Online Programs
• Advanced Materials Search
• Contact Information
• The Teaching Negotiation Resource Center Policies
• Frequently Asked Questions
• Negotiation Journal
• Harvard Negotiation Law Review
• Working Conference on AI, Technology, and Negotiation
• 40th Anniversary Symposium
• Free Reports and Program Guides

Free Videos

• Upcoming Events
• Past Events
• Event Series
• Our Mission
• Keyword Index

PON – Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School - https://www.pon.harvard.edu

Team-Building Strategies: Building a Winning Team for Your Organization

Discover how to build a winning team and boost your business negotiation results in this free special report, Team Building Strategies for Your Organization, from Harvard Law School.

Leadership and Decision-Making: Empowering Better Decisions

A key task in leadership and decision-making is finding ways to encourage employees at all levels to make better decisions on the organization’s behalf in negotiations and beyond, according to a new book..

By Katie Shonk — on April 29th, 2024 / Leadership Skills

What is the role of leadership in an organization? Contrary to the traditional image of a sole individual steering the ship, leaders have an obligation to empower everyone in their organization to make sound and ethical decisions in negotiations and other contexts, write University of California, Berkeley, professor Don A. Moore and Harvard Business School professor Max Bazerman in their new book, Decision Leadership: Empowering Others to Make Better Choices .

During a virtual event moderated by Harvard Business School professor Deepak Malhotra , Moore and Bazerman shared principles on leadership and decision-making from their book. “The thing that leaders can most affect are the decisions of the people they lead,” said Bazerman; consequently, “we’re interested in the decisions not just of the leader but of all of those people who are influenced by the leader.”

Don’t Neglect Ethics

“Great leaders create the norms, structures, incentives, and systems that allow their direct reports, organizations, and the broader stakeholders to make decisions that maximize collective benefit through value creation,” Moore and Bazerman write in Decision Leadership . They emphasize the importance of “setting the stage”—creating environments in which people can make good decisions.

As a result, the leadership and decision-making book focuses a great deal on ethics, noted Malhotra during the book talk. He asked if effective leadership thus must embody a certain type of leadership, such as moral leadership or ethical leadership . “Is there such a thing as being a great leader when you’re not thinking about maximizing collective benefit or value creation?” Malhotra asked.

Claim your FREE copy: Real Leaders Negotiate

If you aspire to be a great leader, not just a boss, start here: Download our FREE Special Report, Real Leaders Negotiate: Understanding the Difference between Leadership and Management , from Harvard Law School.

According to Moore, leaders who ignore the ethical implications of their decisions face profound moral, legal, financial, and other risks. “To pretend that business decisions don’t have ethical implications ignores a key dimension on which decisions will be evaluated,” he said. “Effective leadership must consider the wider consequences of any decision,” which is by definition an ethical consideration.

“If we think about some of the failed leaders of the past decade,” added Bazerman, “whether it’s Adam Neumann [of WeWork] or Elizabeth Holmes [of Theranos] or Travis Kalanick [Uber], we see people who dramatically influenced the behavior of others.” Such leaders caused harm in part “because their leadership was so devoid of the ethical dimension,” Bazerman said. In particular, these leaders failed to consider “how to help people make ethical decisions that will make society better off.”

Beyond Changing Hearts and Minds

Decision Leadership offers advice on how leaders can create cultures, environments, norms, and systems that will promote high-quality ethical decisions within their organizations. As such, the authors argue that the real task of leaders is not just to change “hearts and minds”—that is, persuasion—but to fundamentally change what people do. Wise leaders, they argue, design the organization to steer people toward better, more ethical decisions.

“We have nothing against leaders who inspire change by influencing culture, changing how others think and feel,” said Moore. But Decision Leadership offers more useful, less costly tools for prompting better decisions, he said.

Many of these tools draw on the concept of “nudges” offered by Richard H. Thaler and Cass R. Sunstein in their book Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness . Nudges steer people toward better decisions rather than relying on persuasion. Moore and Bazerman gave the example of organizations that make it convenient for employees to get vaccinated against Covid-19, such as offering the vaccine at work, instead of trying to convince the skeptical of the benefits of being vaccinated.

Rather than leaving hearts and minds out of the equation, Bazerman said, he and Moore aimed to add a consideration of “strategies that will get the behavior done, even if people’s hearts and minds aren’t changed at all.” In recent decades, the tech industry and many governments have embraced the world of behavioral economics and nudges. Bazerman predicted that in the next decade, more business will make use of these tools to spur wiser decisions. In so doing, organizations will move in the direction of collective leadership and away from a more autocratic leadership style .

Experiments in Leadership and Decision-Making

During the talk, Moore, Bazerman, and Malhotra discussed several proven strategies for prompting better leadership and decision-making in organizations, including creating a culture in which employees feel empowered to speak up when they see something wrong, finding ways to encourage leaders to be more open to accepting advice, and running experiments to test the likely success of a decision rather than basing it on intuition.

Google runs thousands of experiments every year to test new ideas and initiatives, Bazerman noted, but “a lot of companies are behind the curve on thinking systematically about how to learn over time.” That’s a strategic mistake, he said: “If you have a company, and you have an idea about how to change some behavior at your 22 offices across the globe involving millions of customers, why wouldn’t you want to test a new idea on 10,000 people first so that you can find what works, tweak it, and make it better over time?”

What leadership and decision-making strategies have you found to be effective in prompting better decisions in your organization?

Related Posts

• Creative Deal Structuring: Negotiating Conditions
• Moral Leadership: Do Women Negotiate More Ethically than Men?
• What Is Facilitative Leadership?
• What Is Collective Leadership?
• Advantages and Disadvantages of Leadership Styles: Uncovering Bias and Generating Mutual Gains

No Responses to “Leadership and Decision-Making: Empowering Better Decisions”

2 responses to “leadership and decision-making: empowering better decisions”.

A brief and concise article which I think could be easily understood by students in the Public Administration discipline….

This is a great, circumspect article that draws attention to the bigger picture in negotiations: the broader and more diverse field of motives and the interests that drive those involved in decision-making. Also noteworthy is awareness if the ethical factor, so often neglected in business decisions and so often detrimental as a result.

Click here to cancel reply.

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment.

Negotiation and Leadership

• Learn More about Negotiation and Leadership

NEGOTIATION MASTER CLASS

• Learn More about Harvard Negotiation Master Class

Negotiation Essentials Online

• Learn More about Negotiation Essentials Online

Beyond the Back Table: Working with People and Organizations to Get to Yes

• Learn More about Beyond the Back Table

Select Your Free Special Report

• Negotiation Essentials Online (NEO) December 2024 and June 2025 Program Guide
• Negotiation Essentials In-House Program Guide
• Negotiation Master Class November 2024 Program Guide
• Beyond the Back Table September 2024 and February 2025 Program Guide
• Negotiation and Leadership Fall 2024 Program Guide
• Negotiation Essentials Online (NEO) Spring 2024 Program Guide
• Negotiation and Leadership Spring 2024 Program Guide
• Make the Most of Online Negotiations
• Managing Multiparty Negotiations
• Getting the Deal Done

Teaching Negotiation Resource Center

• Teaching Materials and Publications

Stay Connected to PON

Preparing for negotiation.

Understanding how to arrange the meeting space is a key aspect of preparing for negotiation. In this video, Professor Guhan Subramanian discusses a real world example of how seating arrangements can influence a negotiator’s success. This discussion was held at the 3 day executive education workshop for senior executives at the Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School.

Guhan Subramanian is the Professor of Law and Business at the Harvard Law School and Professor of Business Law at the Harvard Business School.

Articles & Insights

• Taylor Swift: Negotiation Mastermind?
• Managing Difficult Negotiators
• Learning from BATNA Examples in Negotiation
• Power and Negotiation: Advice on First Offers
• 10 Hard-Bargaining Tactics to Watch Out for in a Negotiation
• The Importance of Negotiation in Business and Your Career
• How to Find the ZOPA in Business Negotiations
• How to Respond to Questions in Negotiation
• Negotiation Skills in Business Negotiation and Status Consciousness
• Women and Negotiation: Narrowing the Gender Gap in Negotiation
• Interpersonal Conflict Resolution: Beyond Conflict Avoidance
• Negotiating a Non-Compete Agreement with Employers
• A Case Study of Conflict Management and Negotiation
• Using Conflict Resolution Skills: Trying to Forgive and Move Forward
• How Conflict Examples Can Teach Us to Listen
• Crisis Communication Examples: What’s So Funny?
• AI Negotiation in the News
• Crisis Negotiation Skills: The Hostage Negotiator’s Drill
• Police Negotiation Techniques from the NYPD Crisis Negotiations Team
• Famous Negotiations Cases – NBA and the Power of Deadlines at the Bargaining Table
• Negotiating with Difficult Personalities and “Dark” Personality Traits
• Dealing with Difficult People and Negotiation: When Should You Give Up the Fight?
• Managing Difficult Employees: Listening to Learn
• Dealing with Hardball Tactics in Negotiation
• Dealing with Difficult People: Coping with an Insulting Offer in Contract Negotiations
• Negotiating Skills: Learn How to Build Trust at the Negotiation Table
• What is Distributive Negotiation and Five Proven Strategies
• Dear Negotiation Coach: How Should I Handle an Early Offer Negotiation?
• Managing a Multiparty Negotiation
• MESO Negotiation: The Benefits of Making Multiple Equivalent Simultaneous Offers in Business Negotiations
• Emotional Triggers: How Emotions Affect Your Negotiating Ability
• 3 Negotiation Strategies for Conflict Resolution
• Choose the Right Dispute Resolution Process
• In Contract Negotiations, Agree on How You’ll Disagree
• Union Strikes and Dispute Resolution Strategies
• How to Overcome Cultural Barriers in Communication – Cultural Approximations of Time and the Impact on Negotiations
• International Arbitration: What it is and How it Works
• Diplomatic Negotiations: The Surprising Benefits of Conflict and Teamwork at the Negotiation Table
• Cross Cultural Communication: Translation and Negotiation
• Famous Negotiators: Tony Blair’s 10 Principles to Guide Diplomats in International Conflict Resolution
• AI Mediation: Using AI to Help Mediate Disputes
• Mediation Training: What Can You Expect?
• Types of Mediation: Choose the Type Best Suited to Your Conflict
• What is Med-Arb?
• Employee Mediation Techniques – Resolve Disputes and Manage Conflict with These Mediation Skills
• What is Negotiation?
• Ask Better Negotiation Questions
• 10 Notable Negotiations of 2021
• Four Negotiation Examples in the Workplace That Sought Greater Equity and Diversity
• What is Anchoring in Negotiation?
• 3-D Negotiation Strategy
• Use a Negotiation Preparation Worksheet for Continuous Improvement
• The Importance of a Relationship in Negotiation
• Collaborative Negotiation Examples: Tenants and Landlords
• Ethics and Negotiation: 5 Principles of Negotiation to Boost Your Bargaining Skills in Business Situations
• Are Salary Negotiation Skills Different for Men and Women?
• How to Ask for a Salary Increase
• How to Negotiate Salary: 3 Winning Strategies
• How to Negotiate a Higher Salary
• Setting Standards in Negotiations
• Camp Lemonnier: Negotiating a Lease Agreement for a Key Military Base in Africa
• Teach Your Students How to Have Difficult Conversations Over Email
• Learn from the Best with the Great Negotiator Case Studies
• Check Out the All-In-One Curriculum Packages!
• Teaching Contract Negotiation: Using the Mutual Gains Approach
• How to Use Tradeoffs to Create Value in Your Negotiations
• For NFL Players, a Win-Win Negotiation Contract Only in Retrospect?
• 5 Win-Win Negotiation Strategies
• What is a Win-Win Negotiation?
• Win-Win Negotiation: Managing Your Counterpart’s Satisfaction

PON Publications

• Negotiation Data Repository (NDR)
• New Frontiers, New Roleplays: Next Generation Teaching and Training
• Negotiating Transboundary Water Agreements
• Learning from Practice to Teach for Practice—Reflections From a Novel Training Series for International Climate Negotiators
• Insights From PON’s Great Negotiators and the American Secretaries of State Program
• Gender and Privilege in Negotiation

Remember Me This setting should only be used on your home or work computer.

Lost your password? Create a new password of your choice.

Copyright © 2024 Negotiation Daily. All rights reserved.

• INTERPERSONAL SKILLS
• Decision-Making and Problem Solving

Search SkillsYouNeed:

Interpersonal Skills:

• A - Z List of Interpersonal Skills
• Interpersonal Skills Self-Assessment
• Communication Skills
• Emotional Intelligence
• Conflict Resolution and Mediation Skills
• Customer Service Skills
• Team-Working, Groups and Meetings

Decision-Making and Problem-Solving

• Effective Decision Making
• Decision-Making Framework
• Introduction to Problem Solving

Identifying and Structuring Problems

Investigating Ideas and Solutions

Implementing a Solution and Feedback

• Creative Problem-Solving

Social Problem-Solving

• Negotiation and Persuasion Skills
• Personal and Romantic Relationship Skills

Subscribe to our FREE newsletter and start improving your life in just 5 minutes a day.

You'll get our 5 free 'One Minute Life Skills' and our weekly newsletter.

We'll never share your email address and you can unsubscribe at any time.

The SkillsYouNeed Guide to Interpersonal Skills

Making decisions and solving problems are two key areas in life, whether you are at home or at work. Whatever you’re doing, and wherever you are, you are faced with countless decisions and problems, both small and large, every day.

Many decisions and problems are so small that we may not even notice them. Even small decisions, however, can be overwhelming to some people. They may come to a halt as they consider their dilemma and try to decide what to do.

Small and Large Decisions

In your day-to-day life you're likely to encounter numerous 'small decisions', including, for example:

Tea or coffee?

What shall I have in my sandwich? Or should I have a salad instead today?

What shall I wear today?

Larger decisions may occur less frequently but may include:

Should we repaint the kitchen? If so, what colour?

Should we relocate?

Should I propose to my partner? Do I really want to spend the rest of my life with him/her?

These decisions, and others like them, may take considerable time and effort to make.

The relationship between decision-making and problem-solving is complex. Decision-making is perhaps best thought of as a key part of problem-solving: one part of the overall process.

Our approach at Skills You Need is to set out a framework to help guide you through the decision-making process. You won’t always need to use the whole framework, or even use it at all, but you may find it useful if you are a bit ‘stuck’ and need something to help you make a difficult decision.

Decision Making

Effective Decision-Making

This page provides information about ways of making a decision, including basing it on logic or emotion (‘gut feeling’). It also explains what can stop you making an effective decision, including too much or too little information, and not really caring about the outcome.

A Decision-Making Framework

This page sets out one possible framework for decision-making.

The framework described is quite extensive, and may seem quite formal. But it is also a helpful process to run through in a briefer form, for smaller problems, as it will help you to make sure that you really do have all the information that you need.

Problem Solving

Introduction to Problem-Solving

This page provides a general introduction to the idea of problem-solving. It explores the idea of goals (things that you want to achieve) and barriers (things that may prevent you from achieving your goals), and explains the problem-solving process at a broad level.

The first stage in solving any problem is to identify it, and then break it down into its component parts. Even the biggest, most intractable-seeming problems, can become much more manageable if they are broken down into smaller parts. This page provides some advice about techniques you can use to do so.

Sometimes, the possible options to address your problem are obvious. At other times, you may need to involve others, or think more laterally to find alternatives. This page explains some principles, and some tools and techniques to help you do so.

Having generated solutions, you need to decide which one to take, which is where decision-making meets problem-solving. But once decided, there is another step: to deliver on your decision, and then see if your chosen solution works. This page helps you through this process.

‘Social’ problems are those that we encounter in everyday life, including money trouble, problems with other people, health problems and crime. These problems, like any others, are best solved using a framework to identify the problem, work out the options for addressing it, and then deciding which option to use.

This page provides more information about the key skills needed for practical problem-solving in real life.

Further Reading from Skills You Need

The Skills You Need Guide to Interpersonal Skills eBooks.

Develop your interpersonal skills with our series of eBooks. Learn about and improve your communication skills, tackle conflict resolution, mediate in difficult situations, and develop your emotional intelligence.

Guiding you through the key skills needed in life

As always at Skills You Need, our approach to these key skills is to provide practical ways to manage the process, and to develop your skills.

Neither problem-solving nor decision-making is an intrinsically difficult process and we hope you will find our pages useful in developing your skills.

Start with: Decision Making Problem Solving

See also: Improving Communication Interpersonal Communication Skills Building Confidence

More From Forbes

The 4 most effective ways leaders solve problems.

• Share to Facebook
• Share to Twitter
• Share to Linkedin

With as many problems as we are all faced with in our work and life, it seems as if there is never enough time to solve each one without dealing with some adversity along the way.  Problems keep mounting so fast that we find ourselves taking short-cuts to temporarily alleviate the tension points – so we can move onto the next problem. In the process, we fail to solve the core of each problem we are dealt; thus we continuously get caught in the trap of a never-ending cycle that makes it difficult to find any real resolutions.  Sound familiar?

Problem solving is the essence of what leaders exist to do.  As leaders, the goal is to minimize the occurrence of problems – which means we must be courageous enough to tackle them head-on before circumstances force our hand.  We must be resilient in our quest to create and sustain momentum for the organization and people we serve. But the reality of the workplace   finds us dealing with people that complicate matters with their corporate politicking, self-promotion, power-plays and ploys, and envy. Silos, lack of budgets and resources, and many other random acts or circumstances also make it harder for people to be productive.

Competitors equally create problems for us when they unexpectedly convert a long-standing client, establish a new industry relationship, or launch a new product, brand or corporate strategy.   Mergers & acquisitions keep us on our toes and further distract us from solving existing problems by creating new ones.

As Karl Popper , one of the most influential 20 th century philosophers of science, once eloquently stated, “All life is problem solving.” I’ve often contended that the best leaders are the best problem solvers. They have the patience to step back and see the problem at-hand through broadened observation; circular vision. They see around, beneath and beyond the problem itself. They see well-beyond the obvious. The most effective leaders approach problems through a lens of opportunity .

Leaders who lack this wisdom approach problems with linear vision – thus only seeing the problem that lies directly in front of them and blocking the possibilities that lie within the problem. As such, they never see the totality of what the problem represents; that it can actually serve as an enabler to improve existing best practices, protocols and standard operating procedures for growing and competing in the marketplace. They never realize that, in the end, all problems are the same – just packaged differently .

A leader must never view a problem as a distraction, but rather as a strategic enabler for continuous improvement and opportunities previously unseen.

When I launched my first venture in the food industry , we had a problem with the adhesion of the labels to the glass jar packaging of our products that affected nearly 20% of an initial shipment.  As circumstances would have it, this was the first shipment to a new client that was “testing” our new products in 200 stores with an opportunity to expand our distribution to over 2500 stores nationally.  Instead of panicking, we took a problem solving approach that involved multiple steps and resulted in a full-blown change management effort with our label supplier, manufacturer, trucking company and client.  Rather than viewing this problem simply as a hurdle that could potentially lose us the client, we took proactive measures (and a financial investment) to show our new client that we were capable of not only solving the problem – but earning their trust by responding promptly and efficiently  with a comprehensive step-by-step incident report that included our change management efforts.

This experience taught us many lessons about our company and helped us to avoid many unforeseen problems.  The ROI from how we handled this problem helped open our eyes to many elements that were previously being overlooked – and in the long run it helped enable us to grow the business.

Whether you are a leader for a large corporation or a small business owner, here are the four most effective ways to solve problems.

1.  Transparent Communication

Problem solving requires transparent communication where everyone’s concerns and points of view are freely expressed. I’ve seen one too many times how difficult it is to get to the root of the matter in a timely manner when people do not speak-up.

Yes, communication is a fundamental necessity. That is why when those involved in the problem would rather not express themselves – fearing they may threaten their job and/or expose their own or someone else’s wrong-doing – the problem solving process becomes a treasure hunt. Effective communication towards problem solving happens because of a leader’s ability to facilitate an open dialogue between people who trust her intentions and feel that they are in a safe environment to share why they believe the problem happened as well as specific solutions.

Once all voices have been heard and all points of view accounted for, the leader (with her team) can collectively map-out a path toward a viable and sustainable solution.  As fundamental as communication may sound, don’t ever assume that people are comfortable sharing what they really think . This is where a leader must trust herself and her intuition enough to challenge the team until accountability can be fairly enforced and a solution can been reached.

2.  Break Down Silos

Transparent communication requires you to break down silos and enable a boundary-less organization whose culture is focused on the betterment of a healthier whole.    Unnecessary silos invite hidden agendas rather than welcome efficient cross-functional collaboration and problem solving.

Organizational silos are the root cause of most workplace problems and are why many of them never get resolved. This is why today’s new workplace must embrace an entrepreneurial spirit where employees can freely navigate and cross-collaborate to connect the problem solving dots; where everyone can be a passionate explorer who knows their own workplace dot and its intersections .  When you know your workplace dot, you have a much greater sense of your sphere of influence . This is almost impossible to gauge when you operate in silos that potentially keep you from having any influence at all.

In a workplace where silos exist,  problem solving is   more difficult  because you are more likely dealing with self-promoters – rather than  team players fostered by a cross functional environment..  When you operate in a siloed environment where everyone wants to be a star, it becomes increasingly difficult to help make anything or anyone better. This is when problem solving becomes a discouraging task.

Breaking down silos allows a leader to more easily engage their employees to get their hands dirty and solve problems together . It becomes less about corporate politicking and more about finding resolutions and making the organization stronger.

3.  Open-minded People

Breaking down silos and communication barriers requires people to be open-minded.  In the end, problem solving is about people working together to make the organization and the people it serves better. Therefore, if you are stuck working with people that are closed-minded, effective problem solving becomes a long and winding road of misery.

There are many people in the workplace that enjoy creating unnecessary chaos so that their inefficiencies are never exposed. These are the types of people ( loafers and leeches ) that make it difficult for problems to get solved because they slow the process down while trying to make themselves look more important.  Discover the lifters and high-potential leaders within the organization and you will see examples of the benefits of being open-minded and how this eventually leads to more innovation and initiative.

Open-minded people see beyond the obvious details before them and view risk as their best friend . They tackle problems head-on and get on with the business of driving growth and innovation.  Close-minded employees turn things around to make it more about themselves and less about what is required to convert a problem into a new opportunity.

With this explanation in mind, carefully observe the actions of others the next time you are dealt a real problem.

4.  A Solid Foundational Strategy

Without strategy, change is merely substitution, not evolution.  A solid strategy must be implemented in order to solve any problem.  Many leaders attempt to dissect a problem rather than identify the strategy for change that lies within the problem itself.

Effective leaders that are comfortable with problem solving always know how to gather the right people, resources, budget and knowledge from past experiences. They inspire people to lift their game by making the problem solving process highly collaborative; for them, it’s an opportunity to bring people closer together. I’ve always believed that you don’t know the true potential and character of a person until you see the way they solve problems.

Effective leaders connect the dots and map-out a realistic plan of action in advance. They have a strategy that serves as the foundation for how the problem will be approached and managed. They anticipate the unexpected and utilize the strengths of their people to assure the strategy leads to a sustainable solution.

Never shoot from the hip when problem solving. Avoid guessing. Take enough time to step back and assess the situation and the opportunities that each problem represents. Make the problem solving process more efficient by recognizing that each problem has its own nuances that may require a distinct strategy towards a viable resolution.

You know that you have great leadership in your organization when problem solving becomes a seamless process that enables the people and the organization to grow and get better.  If problem solving creates chaos, you may have a serious leadership deficiency.

Problem solving is the greatest enabler for growth and opportunity. This is why they say failure serves as the greatest lesson in business and in life.  Be the leader that shows maturity, acts courageously, and requires accountability.  Applying each of these lessons can help you become a master problem solver. Each experience teaches us all new things. Embrace problem solving and the many unseen treasures it represents.

• Email or follow-me on Twitter  @GlennLlopis . Like us  on  Facebook ! Join our  LinkedIn Group

Also on Forbes:

Gallery: 16 Things You Should Do at the Start of Every Work Day

• Editorial Standards
• Reprints & Permissions

Leadership Insights on Problem Solving & Decision Making

• 14 videos | 55m 48s
• Earns a Badge

WHAT YOU WILL LEARN

In this course.

• Locked 1.  Situations vs. Problems 2m 40s A situation is not the same thing as a problem, explains William Mitchell, and it shouldn’t be treated the same way. FREE ACCESS
• Locked 2.  Decision Making as a Skillful Collaboration 4m 27s The collaborative decision-making process takes skillful leadership to pull off. But when you do pull it off, Larry Dressler says, its rewards are significant. FREE ACCESS
• Locked 3.  Decision Making for Tentative Decision Makers 2m 39s To make better, more rationale decisions, provide a clear guide that enables people to push aside the thoughts and feelings that often get in the way. FREE ACCESS
• Locked 4.  Decisions Happen 5m 12s The ability to make sound, timely decisions is what differentiates great leaders from good ones. Colleen Albiston explains not only the importance of good decision making, but also how to communicate those decisions. FREE ACCESS
• Locked 5.  A Better Way to Find Solutions 4m 55s To become an expert problem solver, you need to see opportunities that no one else sees. And to do that, you need to understand a problem-solving strategy called "generate mass." FREE ACCESS
• Locked 6.  Improve Decision Making Through Debate 3m 35s A little debate can go a long way toward improving your decision-making processes. FREE ACCESS
• Locked 7.  Four Steps to Solving a Problem 3m 39s Even if your problem is well stated, it may not be solvable. Follow these four steps to frame your problems in a way that makes solutions possible. FREE ACCESS
• Locked 8.  Why Do Leaders Make Flawed Decisions? 3m 49s Why do leaders make flawed decisions? Group think. Learn how to overcome it and make better decisions. FREE ACCESS
• Locked 9.  Fair and Just Decision Making 2m 59s Implementing decisions efficiently and effectively means building buy-in and commitment from team members. FREE ACCESS
• Locked 10.  Six Tips to Increase Your Creativity at Work 3m 42s Trying to solve a tricky problem? Heidi Abelli shares six terrific tips to get your creative juices flowing. FREE ACCESS
• Locked 11.  Making Better Decisions 5m 19s Some decisions are easy to make because they are essentially no-brainers. Others are a bit more nuanced because they involve trade-offs and uncertain outcomes. How can you ensure you make better decisions? FREE ACCESS
• Locked 12.  Asking the Right Questions 5m 34s Asking the right questions is about creating the conditions that enable us to ask the questions we wouldn't otherwise ask. Discover how active listening and being reflectively quiet is key to asking questions that wouldn't otherwise be asked. FREE ACCESS
• Locked 13.  Lateral Thinking: Letting Go of Assumptions 4m 52s When we approach a problem, we often make a number of assumptions without even realizing it. Lateral thinking helps us to challenge those assumptions and reach innovative solutions. FREE ACCESS
• Locked 14.  Defining Your Day in Terms of the Problems You Solve 2m 25s Some people measure their productivity in terms of how many things they make, or how many tasks they complete. But what is your essential purpose when you show up to work? The simple answer is that you’re there to solve problems. FREE ACCESS

EARN A DIGITAL BADGE WHEN YOU COMPLETE THIS COURSE

Skillsoft is providing you the opportunity to earn a digital badge upon successful completion on some of our courses, which can be shared on any social network or business platform.

YOU MIGHT ALSO LIKE

PEOPLE WHO VIEWED THIS ALSO VIEWED THESE

Want to create or adapt books like this? Learn more about how Pressbooks supports open publishing practices.

8.3 Challenges to Effective Decision Making

The decision-making process can pose interesting challenges to leaders. Within the world of organizations, challenges are commonly referred to as barriers in decision-making, or just barriers. There are six, distinct barriers to overcome [5] .

• Bounded Rationality
• Escalation of Commitment
• Time Constraints
• Uncertainty

When decisions are made within organizations, are all decisions rational in nature? Not necessarily, as within leadership there are issues where the problem or right solution cannot be grasped. Bounded rationality is the notion that challenging complex issues that leaders cannot fully grasp, makes them unable to be rational about the situation, and are, therefore, incapable of understanding an alternative [5] . Within learning organizations, educators would like to believe they can learn everything.  However, at times there is no comprehension of a certain component of learning, thus they become a victim of bounded rationality. This can lead to incorrect decisions being made without all the information, or abandonment of an issue all together.  Both produce an incomplete outcome. Overcoming bounded rationality is difficult given the old adage “you learn something new every day.” With that ideal, no one is ever fully knowledgeable. Therefore, as a leader, it would be best not to work against bounded rationality, but with bounded rationality, understanding its place along continual learning.

In decision-making, it can be difficult to make a tough decision, and even more difficult to live with that decision when it does not pan out. Escalation of commitment is the idea that leaders and managers remain committed to a poor decision, or find it hard to remove themselves from a poor decision rationally [5] . It is hard, as a leader, to take “being wrong,” but it is a learning process. In modern learning organizations, mistakes, critiquing, and revising are all parts of a divergent, learning process.  Therefore, it is fine that a poor decision is made, but there are tools in place to help a learner develop new skills to overcome past mistakes, eventually removing the challenge of escalation.

When discussing time constraints, it is not necessarily discussing time management. Managers could have managed their time well, but outside circumstances could have caused an immediacy for a decision to be made. Time constraints are when there is little time available to collect information with rationality and make an effective decision [5] . When using the example of a university wanting to unveil a new web tool for students that other organizations have completed, time is of the essence, so the tool is launched without grasping all of the information necessary. The web tool eventually releases with numerous bugs and has to be fixed immediately. Although some instances are out of leaders’ control, effective planning, forecasting, and time management can be used to alleviate time constraints.

In everyday life, no one is 100% sure of every decision that is made. If the answer is “no,” not to worry, effective leaders and managers are not always 100% sure of every decision they make either. Uncertainty is the act of not knowing an outcome until said outcome has transpired [5] and is tied in the belief that an outcome is envisioned, but not seen.  Within a learning organization, it is uncertain how to manifest learning in prospective students.  Leaders can only follow a methodology that works best for the learner to absorb content. A desired outcome can be conceived of, but the uncertainty allows only sight of the outcome after the decision has transpired.

One of the most common errors that leaders and managers make is trusting a poor decision based on preconceived notions. Biases , with regards to decisions, follow the notion that the decision made is closely tied to inherent beliefs and world views.  In addition, it enhances beliefs that are similar to our own beliefs [5] . Decisions are usually made and stuck to that are our own.  The idea that our initial beliefs are given more attention, we pay less attention to beliefs outside of our world view.  This is called confirmation bias [5] . Leader’s own confirmation can have an impact on how they work within organizations, and have an adverse effect on the people who do not follow their precise worldviews. One way to avoid bias is to be knowledgeable and empathetic about a contrary idea.  Leaders may make a decision based on personal worldviews, but if they are a cknowledging that it is coming from a form of bias, and can work with incorporating contrary views for a more collaborative decision-making process, then such influences can be circumvented.

Within an organization, leaders and managers should not be shy of turbulent issues. Perhaps not physically, or overtly verbally, but situations can be tense depending on the context. Conflict can be broken down into two areas within an organization:

• Process Conflict – conflict about the best way to find a solution, while others look for other options for a superior solution [5] .
• Relationship Conflict – conflict between individuals that is more personal, involving attacks on character rather than ideas [5] .

Regardless of the conflict, it is best to alleviate conflict at the onset. For example, if there is a conflict between two leaders within an organization, a civil sit down and discussion about worldviews, ideology, and best practices within a workplace can lead to a consensus in some areas and maybe lead to a highly effective decision to be made that makes a positive effect on an organization.

Within learning organizations, leaders and managers are constantly faced with barriers in their decision-making from personal indifference or organizational indifference. When faced with barriers, the use of expert power (Chapter Three) can be an effective tool to help avoid barriers.  Being knowledgeable about a variety of situations can be beneficial for members to hear.  In addition, acknowledging that they are not the beacon of knowledge, and that their decisions may have biases or be uncertain, would lead to a holistic discussion and a collaborative decision, so that everyone is on-board and accountable.

Activity: Interview Analysis

• Read the interview.
• Analyze and construct some themes from the interview.
• Formulate an idea from the interview that reflects effective decision-making.

Source: Morse, G. (2016). Designing a bias-free organization, The Harvard Business Review , July-August, 62-67. https://hbr.org/2016/07/designing-a-bias-free-organization

Designing a Bias-Free Organization

Iris Bohnet thinks firms are wasting their money on diversity training. The problem is, most programs just don’t work. Rather than run more workshops or try to eradicate the biases that cause discrimination, she says, companies need to redesign their processes to prevent biased choices in the first place.

Bohnet directs the Women and Public Policy Program at the Harvard Kennedy School and cochairs its Behavioral Insights Group. Her new book,  What Works ,  describes how simple changes—from eliminating the practice of sharing self-evaluations to rewarding office volunteerism—can reduce the biased behaviors that undermine organizational performance. In this edited interview with HBR senior editor Gardiner Morse, Bohnet describes how behavioral design can neutralize our biases and unleash untapped talent.

HBR :  Organizations put a huge amount of effort into improving diversity and equality but are still falling short. Are they doing the wrong things, not trying hard enough, or both?

Bohnet :  There is some of each going on. Frankly, right now I am most concerned with companies that want to do the right thing but don’t know how to get there, or worse, throw money at the problem without its making much of a difference. Many U.S. corporations, for example, conduct diversity training programs without ever measuring whether they work. My colleague Frank Dobbin at Harvard and many others have done excellent research on the effectiveness of these programs, and unfortunately it looks like they largely don’t change attitudes, let alone behavior. (See  “Why Diversity Programs Fail”  by Frank Dobbin.)   I encourage anyone who thinks they have a program that works to actually evaluate and document its impact. This would be a huge service. I’m a bit on a mission to convince corporations, NGOs, and government agencies to bring the same rigor they apply to their financial decision making and marketing strategies to their people management. Marketers have been running A/B tests for a long time, measuring what works and what doesn’t. HR departments should be doing the same.

HBR: What would a diversity evaluation look like?

Bohnet: There’s a great classroom experiment that’s a good model. John Dovidio and his colleagues at Yale evaluated the effect of an antibias training program on first and second graders in 61 classrooms. About half the classrooms were randomly assigned to get four weeks of sessions on gender, race, and body type with the goal of making the children more accepting of others who were different from them. The other half didn’t get the training. The program had virtually no impact on the children’s willingness to share or play with others. This doesn’t mean you can’t ever teach kids to be more accepting—just that improving people’s inclination to be inclusive is incredibly hard. We need to keep collecting data to learn what works best.  So the point for corporations is to adopt this same methodology for any program they try. Offer the training to a randomly selected group of employees and compare their behaviors afterward with a control group. Of course, this would also mean defining success beforehand. For diversity training programs to go beyond just checking the box, organizations have to be serious about what they want to change and how they plan to evaluate whether their change program worked.  Diversity training programs largely don’t change attitudes, let alone behavior.

HBR: What does behavioral science tell us about what to do, aside from measuring success?

Bohnet: Start by accepting that our minds are stubborn beasts. It’s very hard to eliminate our biases, but we can design organizations to make it easier for our biased minds to get things right. HBR readers may know the story about how orchestras began using blind auditions in the 1970s. It’s a great example of behavioral design that makes it easier to do the unbiased thing. The issue was that fewer than 10% of players in major U.S. orchestras were women. Why was that? Not because women are worse musicians than men but because they were perceived that way by auditioners. So orchestras started having musicians audition behind a curtain, making gender invisible. My Harvard colleague Claudia Goldin and Cecilia Rouse of Princeton showed that this simple change played an important role in increasing the fraction of women in orchestras to almost 40% today. Note that this didn’t result from changing mindsets. In fact, some of the most famous orchestra directors at the time were convinced that they didn’t need curtains because they, of all people, certainly focused on the quality of the music and not whether somebody looked the part. The evidence told a different story.

HBR: So this is good news. Behavioral design works. Bohnet: Yes, it does. The curtains made it easier for the directors to detect talent, independent of what it looked like. On the one hand, I find it liberating to know that bias affects everyone, regardless of their awareness and good intentions. This work is not about pointing fingers at bad people. On the other hand, it is of course also depressing that even those of us who are committed to equality and promoting diversity fall prey to these biases. I am one of those people. When I took my baby boy to a Harvard day care center for the first time a few years back, one of the first teachers I saw was a man. I wanted to turn and run. This  man  didn’t conform to my expectations of what a preschool teacher looked like. Of course, he turned out to be a wonderful caregiver who later became a trusted babysitter at our house—but I couldn’t help my initial gut reaction. I was sexist for only a few seconds, but it bothers me to this day.   Seeing is believing. That is, we need to actually see counterstereotypical examples if we are to change our minds. Until we see more male kindergarten teachers or female engineers, we need behavioral designs to make it easier for our biased minds to get things right and break the link between our gut reactions and our actions.

HBR: What are examples of good behavioral design in organizations?

Bohnet: Well, let’s look at recruitment and talent management, where biases are rampant. You can’t easily put job candidates behind a curtain, but you can do a version of that with software. I am a big fan of tools such as Applied, GapJumpers, and Unitive that allow employers to blind themselves to applicants’ demographic characteristics. The software allows hiring managers to strip age, gender, educational and socioeconomic background, and other information out of résumés so they can focus on talent only.   There’s also a robust literature on how to take bias out of the interview process, which boils down to this: Stop going with your gut. Those unstructured interviews where managers think they’re getting a feel for a candidate’s fit or potential are basically a waste of time. Use structured interviews where every candidate gets the same questions in the same order, and score their answers in order in real time.   You should also be thinking about how your recruitment approach can skew who even applies. For instance, you should scrutinize your job ads for language that unconsciously discourages either men or women from applying. A school interested in attracting the best teachers, for instance, should avoid characterizing the ideal candidate as “nurturing” or “supportive” in the ad copy, because research shows that can discourage men from applying. Likewise, a firm that wants to attract men and women equally should avoid describing the preferred candidate as “competitive” or “assertive,” as research finds that those characterizations can discourage female applicants. The point is that if you want to attract the best candidates and access 100% of the talent pool, start by being conscious about the recruitment language you use.

HBR: What about once you’ve hired someone? How do you design around managers’ biases then?

Bohnet: The same principle applies: Do whatever you can to take instinct out of consideration and rely on hard data. That means, for instance, basing promotions on someone’s objectively measured performance rather than the boss’s feeling about them. That seems obvious, but it’s still surprisingly rare.   Be careful about the data you use, however. Using the wrong data can be as bad as using no data. Let me give you an example. Many managers ask their reports to do self-evaluations, which they then use as part of their performance appraisal. But if employees differ in how self-confident they are—in how comfortable they are with bragging—this will bias the manager’s evaluations. The more self-promoting ones will give themselves better ratings. There’s a lot of research on the anchoring effect, which shows that we can’t help but be influenced by numbers thrown at us, whether in negotiations or performance appraisals. So if managers see inflated ratings on a self-evaluation, they tend to unconsciously adjust their appraisal up a bit. Likewise, poorer self-appraisals, even if they’re inaccurate, skew managers’ ratings downward.   This is a real problem, because there are clear gender (and also cross-cultural) differences in self-confidence. To put it bluntly, men tend to be more overconfident than women—more likely to sing their own praises. One meta-analysis involving nearly 100 independent samples found that men perceived themselves as significantly more effective leaders than women did when, actually, they were rated by others as significantly  less  effective. Women, on the other hand, are more likely to underestimate their capabilities. For example, in studies, they underestimate how good they are at math and think they need to be better than they are to succeed in higher-level math courses. And female students are more likely than male students to drop courses in which their grades don’t meet their own expectations. The point is, do not share self-evaluations with managers before they have made up their minds. They’re likely to be skewed, and I don’t know of any evidence that having people share self-ratings yields any benefits for employees or their organizations.

HBR: But it’s probably not possible to just eliminate all managerial activities that allow biased thinking.

Bohnet: Right. But you can change how managers do these things. One message here is to examine whether practices that we thought were gender-neutral in fact lead to biased outcomes. Take the SAT, for example. Your score shouldn’t have been affected by whether you’re male or female. But it turns out it was. The test once penalized students for incorrect answers in multiple-choice questions. That meant it was risky to guess. Research by Katie Baldiga Coffman of Ohio State University shows that this matters, especially for women. Among equally able test takers, male students are more likely to guess, while female students are more likely to skip questions, fearing the penalty and thus ending up with lower scores. Katie’s research reveals that gender differences in willingness to take risk account for about half of the gender gap in guessing. An analysis of the fall 2001 mathematics SAT scores suggests that this phenomenon alone explains up to 40% of the gap between male and female students in SAT scores. The 2016 SAT has been redesigned so that it doesn’t penalize for incorrect answers. Taking risk out of guessing means that different appetites for risk taking will no longer affect students’ final scores. This can be expected to level the playing field for male and female students.   Notice that the new SAT doesn’t focus on changing the students’ mindsets about risk but instead corrects for different risk tolerances. After all, the test is meant to measure aptitude, not willingness to take risk. Organizations should take a page from this book: Look around and see whether your practices by design favor one gender over the other and discourage some people’s ability to do their best work. Do meetings, for example, reward those most willing to hold forth? If so, are there meeting formats you can use that put everyone on an equal footing?

HBR: How can firms get started?

Bohnet: Begin by collecting data. When I was academic dean at the Harvard Kennedy School, one day I came to the office to find a group of students camped out in front of my door. They were concerned about the lack of women on the faculty. Or so I thought. Much to my surprise, I realized that it was not primarily the number of female faculty that concerned them but the lack of role models for female students. They wanted to see more female leaders—in the classroom, on panels, behind the podium, teaching, researching, and advising. It turns out we had never paid attention to—or measured—the gender breakdown of the people visiting the Kennedy School.   So we did. And our findings resembled those of most organizations that collect such data for the first time: The numbers weren’t pretty.   Here’s the good news. Once you collect and study the data, you can make changes and measure progress. In 1999, MIT acknowledged that it had been unintentionally discriminating against female faculty. An examination of data had revealed gender differences in salary, space, resources, awards, and responses to outside offers. The data had real consequences. A follow-up study, published in 2011, showed that the number of female faculty in science and engineering had almost doubled, and several women held senior leadership positions.   Companies can do their own research or turn to consultants for help. EDGE, where I serve as a scientific adviser, is a Swiss foundation and private company that helps organizations across the sectors measure how well they do in terms of gender equality. A firm named Paradigm is another. I came across it when I was speaking with tech firms in Silicon Valley and San Francisco. It helps companies diagnose where the problems are, starting by collecting data, and then come up with possible solutions, often based on behavioral designs.

HBR: You said that “seeing is believing.” But given the lack of senior female role models in organizations, what else can we do?

Bohnet: About a decade ago we noticed that of all the portraits of leaders on the walls of the Kennedy School, exactly zero were of women. The portraits we display affect what our employees and our students believe possible for themselves. I can attest that it was not our intention to signal to fully half of our students that they were not made to be leaders. Rather, this was done unthinkingly. Since then we have added new portraits, including Ida B. Wells, the U.S. civil rights activist and suffragist, and Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, the president of Liberia, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, and a graduate of the Kennedy School.

HBR: You argue that it’s often a waste of time to try to debias people—but hanging portraits of women seems like a strategy to actually change individuals’ perceptions.

Bohnet: I am not arguing that mindsets can never change. But what we generally find is for beliefs to change, people’s experiences have to change first. Being surrounded by role models who look like you can affect what you think is possible for people like you. Sapna Cheryan of the University of Washington, for example, has shown that decorations in a computer science classroom can affect performance. Replacing the male-dominated  Star Wars  and  Star Trek  images with gender-neutral art and nature pictures strengthened female students’ associations between women and careers in computer science. In another study, women who were shown a picture of Hillary Clinton or Angela Merkel before giving a public speech did objectively better than those who were shown a picture of Bill Clinton or no picture at all. So what do we do with our boardrooms and hallways that celebrate our (male focused) history? When asked this question at a recent talk I gave at the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, I answered that, sometimes, we have to “hurry history.” I think that presidents John and John Quincy Adams, spouse and son of the thought leader and First Lady, Abigail Adams, would be proud that her portrait now is on Harvard’s walls—and of course, its presence makes a big difference to our female students.

HBR: Men may resist organizational changes favoring women because they view gender equality as zero sum—if women win, men lose. How then do you enlist men as agents of change?

Bohnet: Few men oppose the idea of benefiting from the entire talent pool—at least in theory. But some are concerned about actually leveling the playing field. In practice, of course, the blind auditions in orchestras have increased competition for male musicians. And the inclusion of women affects competition for men in all jobs. I understand that increased competition can be painful, but I am too much of an economist to not believe in the value of competition. There is no evidence that protectionism has served the world well.   Enlisting men is partly about helping them to see the benefits of equality. Fathers of daughters are some of the strongest proponents of gender equality, for obvious reasons, so they can be particularly powerful voices when it comes to bringing other men along. Research on male CEOs, politicians, and judges shows that fathers of daughters care more about gender equality than men without children or with only sons. I would urge fathers of daughters to be outspoken in their own organizations and to advocate for equality not just as a broad goal, but to actively help drive the changes I describe here—collecting baseline organizational data, promoting experiments, measuring what works, changing processes to limit the impact of our biased minds and level the playing field, and so on.   A big part is, simply, continued awareness building—not just of the problem but also of the solutions available to organizations. I recently gave a talk on Wall Street to an audience that was male. I started by inviting people with children to raise their hands. Then I asked those with daughters to raise their hands. Many hands were up. I told them that this made my job easy as some of my biggest allies were in the room. It broke the ice, especially when I told the audience that my husband and I only have sons—who are great feminists, I might add, and in small ways have already brought behavioral insights to their school by reminding the principal to refer to teachers in general as both “he” and “she.”

The notion that challenging of complex issues that we as leaders cannot fully grasp, we are unable to be rational about the situation and be incapable of understanding an alternative

The idea that leaders and managers remain committed to a poor decision, or find it hard to remove ourselves from a poor decision rationally

When there is little time available to collect information with rationality and make an effective decision

The idea that our initial beliefs are given more attention and pay less attention to beliefs outside of our world view

Leadership and Management in Learning Organizations Copyright © by Clayton Smith; Carson Babich; and Mark Lubrick is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

Share This Book

• Virtual + Live Programs
• TCL Program
• Member Benefits
• Resource Library
• Event Calendar
• 27 Competencies

Problem Solving Ability

Definition: anticipating, analyzing, diagnosing, and resolving problems..

Leaders with an aptitude for problem-solving have the ability to analyze, diagnose and deal with problems effectively. Whether the problem is linear and “tame,” or nonlinear and “wicked,” adept problem solvers have a natural propensity to discover and help lead others to solutions. The leaders of tomorrow must learn to be collaborative problem-solving facilitators, instead of solitary master problem-solvers. Problem-solving ability is a multi-faceted competency that uses other skills discussed throughout the Leaders Are Clear Thinkers section, including conceptual thinking, planning and organization, and creativity. In this section you’ll discover resources and activities to sharpen your problem-solving skills.

Join our community  to learn more about problem-solving skills, and to access resources and activities to help you along the way. 

Problem Solving Ability Coaching Guide

Leaders with an aptitude for problem-solving have the ability to analyze, diagnose and deal with problems effectively.

How to Teach Your Organization to Respond Quickly to Opportunity

By Dr. Evans Baiya • 4 min read

It is imperative that every business leader understands how to identify opportunities and can train their team members to do the same.

A Different Approach to Strategy

For authors Dr. Timothy Waema, Ron Price, and Dr. Evans Baiya, strategy is only one part of the work they do for clients across the globe.

The Complete Leader Audio Book: Problem Solving Ability (Part 1.6)

By Ron Price • 18 min

Ideas to Get Better at Problem Solving Ability

Want to improve your Problem Solving Ability skills? Check out this graphic for a variety of ideas that you can start implementing right away to improve your sc

Collaborating Across the Globe

We all did a little something different during our extended time at home during the early days of the pandemic.

The Elements of Collaboration

By Dr. Francis Eberle • 4 min read

These days we hear and read a lot about collaboration. Organizations say they value collaboration, and teams want more of it.

How to Strategize for Disruption

The idea of creating a resilient strategy seems to come up in conversation again and again these days.

Is Communication Sabotaging Your Ability to Innovate?

By Dr. Evans Baiya

Avoid these four communications landmines as you navigate the stages of innovation.

Seven Ways to Remove Obstacles

By Jalene Case • 4 min read

You can have well-planned, daring, or exciting goals and still get knocked off track. In fact, I can pretty much guarantee it.

Reframing ‘The Great Resignation’ As ‘The Great Opportunity’

By Dr. Francis Eberle

Asking what to do about the “Great Resignation” is the wrong question right now. A better question is, “How can we benefit from this shift?

Create a Team of Master Problem Solvers

Problem-solving is an essential skill as an innovator. If problems stump your employees, how can your organization ever innovate for customers?

PRDV217: Introduction to Sales

Leadership and Working in Teams

Before we jump in, read this summary of some dynamics at work in any sales team.

Problem Solving and Decision-Making in Groups

Although the steps of problem-solving and decision-making we will discuss next may seem obvious, we often do not think to or choose not to use them. Instead, we start working on a problem and later realize we are lost and must backtrack. I am sure we have all reached a point in a project or task and had the "OK, now what?" moment. I have recently taken up some carpentry projects as a functional hobby, and I have developed a great respect for the importance of advanced planning. It is frustrating to get to a crucial point in building or fixing something only to realize that you have to unscrew a support board that you already screwed in, have to drive back to the hardware store to get something that you didn't think to get earlier, or have to completely start over. In this section, we will discuss the group problem-solving process, methods of decision-making, and influences on these processes.

Figure 8.5.1: Group problem-solving can be a confusing puzzle unless it is approached systematically.

Group Problem-Solving Process

There are several variations of similar problem-solving models based on US American scholar John Dewey's reflective thinking process. As you read through the steps in the process, think about how we can apply what we have learned regarding the general and specific elements of problems. Some of the following steps are straightforward, and they are things we would logically do when faced with a problem. However, taking a deliberate and systematic approach to problem-solving has been shown to benefit group functioning and performance.

A deliberate approach is especially beneficial for groups that do not have an established history of working together and will only be able to meet occasionally. Although a group should attend to each step of the process, group leaders or other group members who facilitate problem-solving should be cautious not to dogmatically follow each element of the process or force a group along. Such a lack of flexibility could limit group member input and negatively affect the group's cohesion and climate.

Step 1: Define the Problem

Define the problem by considering the three elements shared by every problem: the current undesirable situation , the goal or more desirable situation, and obstacles in the way. At this stage, group members share what they know about the current situation, without proposing solutions or evaluating the information.

Here are some good questions to ask during this stage: What is the current difficulty? How did we come to know that the difficulty exists? Who/what is involved? Why is it meaningful/urgent/important? What have the effects been so far? What, if any, elements of the difficulty require clarification?

At the end of this stage, the group should be able to compose a single sentence that summarizes the problem called a problem statement. Avoid wording in the problem statement or question that hints at potential solutions. A small group formed to investigate ethical violations of city officials could use the following problem statement: "Our state does not currently have a mechanism for citizens to report suspected ethical violations by city officials."

Step 2: Analyze the Problem

During this step, a group should analyze the problem and the group's relationship to the problem. Whereas the first step involved exploring the "what" related to the problem, this step focuses on the "why." At this stage, group members can discuss the potential causes of the difficulty. Group members may also want to begin setting out an agenda or timeline for the group's problem-solving process, looking forward to the other steps. To fully analyze the problem, the group can discuss the five common problem variables discussed before.

Here are two examples of questions that the group formed to address ethics violations might ask: Why doesn't our city have an ethics reporting mechanism? Do cities of similar size have such a mechanism? Once the problem has been analyzed, the group can pose a problem question that will guide the group as it generates possible solutions. "How can citizens report suspected ethical violations of city officials and how will such reports be processed and addressed?" As you can see, the problem question is more complex than the problem statement, since the group has moved on to a more in-depth discussion of the problem during step 2.

Step 3: Generate Possible Solutions

During this step, group members generate possible solutions to the problem. Again, solutions should not be evaluated at this point, only proposed and clarified. The question should be what could we do to address this problem, not what should we do to address it. It is perfectly OK for a group member to question another person's idea by asking something like "What do you mean?" or "Could you explain your reasoning more?"

Discussions at this stage may reveal a need to return to previous steps to better define or more fully analyze a problem. Since many problems are multifaceted, group members must generate solutions for each part of the problem separately, making sure to have multiple solutions for each part. Stopping the solution-generating process prematurely can lead to groupthink.

For the problem question previously posed, the group would need to generate solutions for all three parts of the problem included in the question. Possible solutions for the first part of the problem (How can citizens report ethical violations?) may include "online reporting system, email, in-person, anonymously, on-the-record," and so on. Possible solutions for the second part of the problem (How will reports be processed?) may include "daily by a newly appointed ethics officer, weekly by a nonpartisan nongovernment employee," and so on. Possible solutions for the third part of the problem (How will reports be addressed?) may include "by a newly appointed ethics commission, by the accused's supervisor, by the city manager," and so on.

Step 4: Evaluate Solutions

During this step, solutions can be critically evaluated based on their credibility, completeness, and worth. Once the potential solutions have been narrowed based on more obvious differences in relevance and/or merit, the group should analyze each solution based on its potential effects - especially negative effects. Groups that are required to report the rationale for their decision or whose decisions may be subject to public scrutiny would be wise to make a set list of criteria for evaluating each solution. Additionally, solutions can be evaluated based on how well they fit with the group's charge and the group's abilities.

To do this, group members may ask, "Does this solution live up to the original purpose or mission of the group?" and "Can the solution actually be implemented with our current resources and connections?" and "How will this solution be supported, funded, enforced, and assessed?" Secondary tensions and substantive conflict, two concepts discussed earlier, emerge during this step of problem-solving, and group members will need to employ effective critical thinking and listening skills.

Decision-making is part of the larger process of problem-solving and it plays a prominent role in this step. While there are several fairly similar models for problem-solving, there are many varied decision-making techniques that groups can use.

For example, to narrow the list of proposed solutions, group members may decide by majority vote, by weighing the pros and cons, or by discussing them until a consensus is reached. There are also more complex decision-making models like the "six hats method," which we will discuss later. Once the final decision is reached, the group leader or facilitator should confirm that the group is in agreement. It may be beneficial to let the group break for a while or even to delay the final decision until a later meeting to allow people time to evaluate it outside of the group context.

Step 5: Implement and Assess the Solution

Implementing the solution requires some advanced planning, and it should not be rushed unless the group is operating under strict time restraints or delay may lead to some kind of harm. Although some solutions can be implemented immediately, others may take days, months, or years. As was noted earlier, it may be beneficial for groups to poll those affected by the solution as to their opinion of it or even do a pilot test to observe the solution's effectiveness and how people react to it.

Before implementation, groups should also determine how and when they would assess the solution's effectiveness by asking, "How will we know if the solution is working or not?" Since solution assessment will vary based on whether or not the group is disbanded, groups should also consider the following questions: If the group disbands after implementation, who will be responsible for assessing the solution? If the solution fails, will the same group reconvene or will a new group be formed?

Figure 8.5.2 : Once a solution has been reached and the group has the "green light" to implement it, it should proceed deliberately and cautiously, making sure to consider possible consequences and address them as needed.

Certain elements of the solution may need to be delegated to various people inside and outside the group. Group members may also be assigned to implement a particular part of the solution based on their role in the decision-making or because it connects to their area of expertise. Likewise, group members may be tasked with publicizing the solution or "selling" it to a particular group of stakeholders. Last, the group should consider its future. In some cases, the group will get to decide if it will stay together and continue working on other tasks or if it will disband. In other cases, outside forces determine the group's fate.

Getting Competent: Problem Solving and Group Presentations

Giving a group presentation requires that individual group members and the group as a whole solve many problems and make many decisions. Although having more people involved in a presentation increases logistical difficulties and has the potential to create more conflict, a well-prepared and well-delivered group presentation can be more engaging and effective than a typical presentation. The main problems facing a group giving a presentation are (1) dividing responsibilities, (2) coordinating schedules and time management, and (3) working out the logistics of the presentation delivery.

Regarding dividing responsibilities, assigning individual work at the first meeting and then trying to fit it all together before the presentation (which is what many college students do when faced with a group project) is not the recommended method. Integrating content and visual aids created by several different people into a seamless final product takes time and effort, and the person "stuck" with this job at the end usually ends up developing some resentment toward his or her group members. While it's OK for group members to do work independently outside of group meetings, spend time working together to help set up some standards for content and formatting expectations that will help make later integration of work easier.

Taking the time to complete one part of the presentation together can help set those standards for later individual work. Discuss the roles that various group members will play openly to avoid role confusion. There could be one point person for keeping track of the group's progress and schedule, one point person for communication, one point person for content integration, one point person for visual aids, and so on. Each person shouldn't do all that work on his or her own but help focus the group's attention on his or her specific area during group meetings.

Scheduling group meetings is one of the most challenging problems groups face, given people's busy lives. From the beginning, it should be clearly communicated that the group needs to spend considerable time in face-to-face meetings, and group members should know that they may have to make an occasional sacrifice to attend. Especially important is the commitment to scheduling time to rehearse the presentation. Consider creating a contract of group guidelines that include expectations for meeting attendance to increase group members' commitment.

Group presentations require members to navigate many logistics of their presentation. While it may be easier for a group to assign each member to create a five-minute segment and then transition from one person to the next, this is definitely not the most engaging method. Creating a master presentation and then assigning individual speakers creates a more fluid and dynamic presentation and allows everyone to become familiar with the content, which can help if a person doesn't show up to present and during the question-and-answer section. Once the content of the presentation is complete, figure out introductions, transitions, visual aids, and the use of time and space. In terms of introductions, figure out if one person will introduce all the speakers at the beginning, if speakers will introduce themselves at the beginning, or if introductions will occur as the presentation progresses.

In terms of transitions, make sure each person has included in his or her speaking notes when presentation duties switch from one person to the next. Visual aids have the potential to cause hiccups in a group presentation if they aren't fluidly integrated. Practicing with visual aids and having one person control them may help prevent this. Know how long your presentation is and know how you're going to use the space. Presenters should know how long the whole presentation should be and how long each segment should be so that everyone can share the responsibility of keeping time. Also, consider the size and layout of the presentation space. You don't want presenters huddled in a corner until it's their turn to speak or trapped behind furniture when their turn comes around.

• Of the three main problems facing group presenters, which do you think is the most challenging and why?
• Why do you think people tasked with a group presentation (especially students) prefer to divide the parts up and have members work on them independently before coming back together and integrating each part? What problems emerge from this method? In what ways might developing a master presentation and then assign parts to different speakers be better than the more divided method? What are the drawbacks to the master presentation method?

Specific Decision-Making Techniques

Some decision-making techniques involve determining a course of action based on the level of agreement among the group members. These methods include majority , expert , authority , and consensus rule . Figure 8.5.4 "Pros and Cons of Agreement-Based Decision-Making Techniques" reviews the pros and cons of each method.

Figure 8.5.4 : Majority rule is a simple method of decision-making based on voting. In most cases, a majority is considered half plus one.

Majority rule is a commonly used decision-making technique in which a majority (one-half plus one) must agree before a decision is made . A show-of-hands vote, a paper ballot, or an electronic voting system can determine the majority choice. Many decision-making bodies, including the US House of Representatives, Senate, and Supreme Court, use majority rule to make decisions, which shows that it is often associated with democratic decision-making since each person gets one vote and each vote counts equally. Of course, other individuals and mediated messages can influence a person's vote, but since the voting power is spread out over all group members, it is not easy for one person or party to take control of the decision-making process. In some cases - for example, to override a presidential veto or to amend the constitution - a supermajority of two-thirds may be required to make a decision.

Minority rule is a decision-making technique in which a designated authority or expert has the final say over a decision and may or may not consider the input of other group members . When a designated expert makes a decision by minority rule, there may be buy-in from others in the group, especially if the members of the group didn't have relevant knowledge or expertise. When a designated authority makes decisions, buy-in will vary based on group members' level of respect for the authority. For example, decisions made by an elected authority may be more accepted by those who elected him or her than by those who didn't.

As with majority rule, this technique can be time-saving. Unlike majority rule, one person or party can have control over the decision-making process. This type of decision-making is more similar to that used by monarchs and dictators. An obvious negative consequence of this method is that the needs or wants of one person can override the needs and wants of the majority. A minority deciding for the majority has led to negative consequences throughout history. The white Afrikaner minority that ruled South Africa for decades instituted apartheid, which was a system of racial segregation that disenfranchised and oppressed the majority population. The quality of the decision and its fairness really depends on the designated expert or authority.

Consensus rule is a decision-making technique in which all group members must agree on the same decision . On rare occasions, a decision may be ideal for all group members, leading to a unanimous agreement without further debate and discussion. Although this can be positive, be cautious that this is not a sign of groupthink. More typically, the consensus is reached only after a lengthy discussion.

On the plus side, consensus often leads to high-quality decisions due to the time and effort it takes to get everyone in agreement. Group members are also more likely to be committed to the decision because they invest in reaching it. On the negative side, the ultimate decision is often one that all group members can live with but not ideal for all members. Additionally, arriving at a consensus also includes conflict, as people debate ideas and negotiate the interpersonal tensions that may result.

Figure 8.5.4 : Pros and Cons of Agreement-Based Decision-Making Techniques

Getting Critical: Six Hats Method of Decision Making

Edward de Bono developed the Six Hats method of thinking in the late 1980s, and it has since become a regular feature in decision-making training in business and professional contexts. The method's popularity lies in its ability to help people get out of habitual ways of thinking and to allow group members to play different roles and see a problem or decision from multiple points of view. The basic idea is that each of the six hats represents a different way of thinking, and when we figuratively switch hats, we switch the way we think. The hats and their style of thinking are as follows:

• White hat. Objective - focuses on seeking information such as data and facts and then processes that information in a neutral way.
• Red hat. Emotional - uses intuition, gut reactions, and feelings to judge information and suggestions.
• Black hat. Negative - focus on potential risks, point out possibilities for failure, and evaluates information cautiously and defensively.
• Yellow hat. Positive - is optimistic about suggestions and future outcomes gives constructive and positive feedback, points out benefits and advantages.
• Green hat. Creative - try to generate new ideas and solutions, think "outside the box."
• Blue hat. Philosophical - uses metacommunication to organize and reflect on the thinking and communication in the group, facilitates who wears what hat, and when group members change hats.

Specific sequences or combinations of hats can be used to encourage strategic thinking. For example, the group leader may start off wearing the Blue Hat and suggest that the group start their decision-making process with some "White Hat thinking" in order to process through facts and other available information. During this stage, the group could also process through what other groups have done when faced with a similar problem. Then the leader could begin an evaluation sequence starting with two minutes of "Yellow Hat thinking" to identify potential positive outcomes, then "Black Hat thinking" to allow group members to express reservations about ideas and point out potential problems, then "Red Hat thinking" to get people's gut reactions to the previous discussion, then "Green Hat thinking" to identify other possible solutions that are more tailored to the group's situation or completely new approaches.

At the end of a sequence, the Blue Hat would want to summarize what was said and begin a new sequence. To successfully use this method, the person wearing the Blue Hat should be familiar with different sequences and plan some thinking patterns ahead of time based on the problem and the group members. Each round of thinking should be limited to a certain time frame (two to five minutes) to keep the discussion moving.

• This decision-making method has been praised because it allows group members to "switch gears" in their thinking and allows for role-playing, which lets people express ideas more freely. How can this help enhance critical thinking? Which combination of hats do you think would be best for a critical thinking sequence?
• What combinations of hats might be useful if the leader wanted to break the larger group up into pairs and why? For example, what kind of thinking would result from putting Yellow and Red together, Black and White together, or Red and White together, and so on?
• Based on your preferred ways of thinking and your personality, which hat would be the best fit for you? Which would be the most challenging? Why?

Figure 8.5.5 : Personality affects decision-making. For example, "emotional" group members make rash decisions.

Influences on Decision Making

The personalities of group members, especially leaders and other active members, affect the group's climate. Group member personalities can be categorized based on where they fall on a continuum anchored by the following descriptors: dominant/submissive, friendly/unfriendly, and instrumental/emotional. The more group members there are in any extreme of these categories, the more likely it that the group climate will also shift to resemble those characteristics.

• Dominant versus submissive. Group members that are more dominant act more independently and directly, initiate conversations, take up more space, make more direct eye contact, seek leadership positions, and take control over decision-making processes. More submissive members are reserved, contribute to the group only when asked to, avoid eye contact, and leave their personal needs and thoughts unvoiced or give in to the suggestions of others.
• Friendly versus unfriendly. Group members on the friendly side of the continuum find a balance between talking and listening, don't try to win at the expense of other group members, are flexible but not weak, and value democratic decision-making. Unfriendly group members are disagreeable, indifferent, withdrawn, and selfish, which leads them to either not invest in decision-making or direct it in their own interest rather than in the group's interest.
• Instrumental versus emotional. Instrumental group members are emotionally neutral, objective, analytical, task-oriented, and committed followers, which leads them to work hard and contribute to the group's decision-making as long as it is orderly and follows agreed-on rules. Emotional group members are creative, playful, independent, unpredictable, and expressive, which leads them to make rash decisions, resist group norms or decision-making structures and switch often from relational to task focus.

Domestic Diversity and Group Communication

While it is becoming more likely that we will interact in small groups with international diversity, we are guaranteed to interact in groups that are diverse in terms of the cultural identities found within a single country or the subcultures found within a larger cultural group.

Gender stereotypes sometimes influence the roles that people play within a group. For example, the stereotype that women are more nurturing than men may lead group members (both male and female) to expect that women will play the role of supporters or harmonizers within the group. Since women have primarily performed secretarial work since the 1900s, it may also be expected that women will play the role of the recorder. In both of these cases, stereotypical notions of gender place women in roles that are typically not as valued in group communication.

The opposite is true for men. In terms of leadership, despite notable exceptions, research shows that men fill an overwhelmingly disproportionate amount of leadership positions. We are socialized to see certain behaviors by men as indicative of leadership abilities, even though they may not be. For example, men are often perceived to contribute more to a group because they tend to speak first when asked a question or to fill a silence and are perceived to talk more about task-related matters than relationally oriented matters.

Both of these tendencies create a perception that men are more engaged with the task. Men are also socialized to be more competitive and self-congratulatory, meaning that their communication may be seen as dedicated and their behaviors seen as powerful, and that when their work isn't noticed they will be more likely to make it known to the group rather than take silent credit. Even though we know that the relational elements of a group are crucial for success, even in high-performance teams, that work is not as valued in our society as task-related work.

Although some communication patterns and behaviors related to our typical (and stereotypical) gender socialization affects how we interact in and form perceptions of others in groups, the differences in group communication that used to be attributed to gender in early group communication research seem to be diminishing. This is likely due to the changing organizational cultures from which much group work emerges, which now has more than 60 years to adjust to women in the workplace. It is also due to a more nuanced understanding of gender-based research, which doesn't take a stereotypical view from the beginning as many early male researchers did.

Now, instead of biological sex being assumed as a factor that creates inherent communication differences, group communication scholars see that men and women both exhibit a range of behaviors that are more or less feminine or masculine. It is these gendered behaviors, and not a person's gender, that seem to have more of an influence on perceptions of group communication. Interestingly, group interactions are still masculinist in that male and female group members prefer a more masculine communication style for task leaders.

Both males and females in this role are more likely to adapt to a more masculine communication style. Conversely, men who take on social-emotional leadership behaviors adopt a more feminine communication style. In short, it seems that although masculine communication traits are more often associated with high-status positions in groups, both men and women adapt to this expectation and are evaluated similarly.

Other demographic categories influence group communication and decision-making. In general, group members have an easier time communicating when they are more similar than different regarding race and age. This ease of communication can make group work more efficient, but the homogeneity, meaning the members are more similar, may sacrifice some creativity. n general, groups that are culturally heterogeneous have better overall performance than more homogenous groups (Haslett & Ruebush, 1999). These groups benefit from the diversity of perspectives in terms of the quality of decision-making and creativity of output.

The benefits and challenges that come with the diversity of group members are important to consider. Since we will all work in diverse groups, we should be prepared to address potential challenges to reap the benefits. Diverse groups may be wise to coordinate social interactions outside of group time to find common ground that can help facilitate interaction and increase group cohesion. We should be sensitive but not let sensitivity create fear of "doing something wrong" which then prevents us from having meaningful interactions.

Key Takeaways

• Every problem has common components: an undesirable situation, the desired situation, and obstacles between the undesirable and desirable situations. Every problem also has a set of characteristics that vary among problems, including task difficulty, number of possible solutions, group member interest in the problem, group familiarity with the problem, and the need for solution acceptance.

The group problem-solving process has five steps:

• Define the problem by creating a problem statement that summarizes it.
• Analyze the problem and create a problem question that can guide solution generation.
• Generate possible solutions. Possible solutions should be offered and listed without stopping to evaluate each one.
• Evaluate the solutions based on their credibility, completeness, and worth. Groups should also assess the potential effects of the narrowed list of solutions.
• Implement and assess the solution. Aside from enacting the solution, groups should determine how they will know the solution is working or not.
• Common decision-making techniques include majority rule, minority rule, and consensus rule. Only a majority, usually one-half plus one, must agree before a decision is made with majority rule. With minority rule, a designated authority or expert has the final say over a decision, and the input of group members may or may not be invited or considered. With the consensus rule, all group members must agree on the same decision.

Several factors influence the decision-making process:

• Situational factors include the degree of freedom a group has to make its own decisions, the level of uncertainty facing the group and its task, the size of the group, the group's access to information, and the origin and urgency of the problem.
• Personality influences on decision-making include a person's value orientation (economic, aesthetic, theoretical, political, or religious), and personality traits (dominant/submissive, friendly/unfriendly, and instrumental/emotional).
• Cultural influences on decision-making include the heterogeneity or homogeneity of the group makeup; cultural values and characteristics such as individualism/collectivism, power distance, and high-/low-context communication styles; and gender and age differences.

What is decision making?

Decisions, decisions. When was the last time you struggled with a choice? Maybe it was this morning, when you decided to hit the snooze button—again. Perhaps it was at a restaurant, with a miles-long menu and the server standing over you. Or maybe it was when you left your closet in a shambles after trying on seven different outfits before a big presentation. Often, making a decision—even a seemingly simple one—can be difficult. And people will go to great lengths—and pay serious sums of money—to avoid having to make a choice. The expensive tasting menu at the restaurant, for example. Or limiting your closet choices to black turtlenecks, à la Steve Jobs.

Get to know and directly engage with senior McKinsey experts on decision making

Aaron De Smet is a senior partner in McKinsey’s New Jersey office, Eileen Kelly Rinaudo  is McKinsey’s global director of advancing women executives and is based in the New York office, Frithjof Lund is a senior partner in the Oslo office, and Leigh Weiss is a senior adviser in the Boston office.

If you’ve ever wrestled with a decision at work, you’re definitely not alone. According to McKinsey research, executives spend a significant portion of their time— nearly 40 percent , on average—making decisions. Worse, they believe most of that time is poorly used. People struggle with decisions so much so that we actually get exhausted from having to decide too much, a phenomenon called decision fatigue.

But decision fatigue isn’t the only cost of ineffective decision making. According to a McKinsey survey of more than 1,200 global business leaders, inefficient decision making costs a typical Fortune 500 company 530,000 days  of managers’ time each year, equivalent to about $250 million in annual wages. That’s a lot of turtlenecks.

How can business leaders ease the burden of decision making and put this time and money to better use? Read on to learn the ins and outs of smart decision making—and how to put it to work.

Learn more about our People & Organizational Performance Practice .

How can organizations untangle ineffective decision-making processes?

McKinsey research has shown that agile is the ultimate solution for many organizations looking to streamline their decision making . Agile organizations are more likely to put decision making in the right hands, are faster at reacting to (or anticipating) shifts in the business environment, and often attract top talent who prefer working at companies with greater empowerment and fewer layers of management.

For organizations looking to become more agile, it’s possible to quickly boost decision-making efficiency by categorizing the type of decision to be made and adjusting the approach accordingly. In the next section, we review three types of decision making and how to optimize the process for each.

What are three keys to faster, better decisions?

Business leaders today have access to more sophisticated data than ever before. But it hasn’t necessarily made decision making any easier. For one thing, organizational dynamics—such as unclear roles, overreliance on consensus, and death by committee—can get in the way of straightforward decision making. And more data often means more decisions to be taken, which can become too much for one person, team, or department. This can make it more difficult for leaders to cleanly delegate, which in turn can lead to a decline in productivity.

Leaders are growing increasingly frustrated with broken decision-making processes, slow deliberations, and uneven decision-making outcomes. Fewer than half  of the 1,200 respondents of a McKinsey survey report that decisions are timely, and 61 percent say that at least half the time they spend making decisions is ineffective.

What’s the solution? According to McKinsey research, effective solutions center around categorizing decision types and organizing different processes to support each type. Further, each decision category should be assigned its own practice—stimulating debate, for example, or empowering employees—to yield improvements in effectiveness.

Here are the three decision categories  that matter most to senior leaders, and the standout practice that makes the biggest difference for each type of decision.

• Big-bet decisions are infrequent but high risk, such as acquisitions. These decisions carry the potential to shape the future of the company, and as a result are generally made by top leaders and the board. Spurring productive debate by assigning someone to argue the case for and against a potential decision can improve big-bet decision making.
• Cross-cutting decisions, such as pricing, can be frequent and high risk. These are usually made by business unit heads, in cross-functional forums as part of a collaborative process. These types of decisions can be improved by doubling down on process refinement. The ideal process should be one that helps clarify objectives, measures, and targets.
• Delegated decisions are frequent but low risk and are handled by an individual or working team with some input from others. Delegated decision making can be improved by ensuring that the responsibility for the decision is firmly in the hands of those closest to the work. This approach also enhances engagement and accountability.

In addition, business leaders can take the following four actions to help sustain rapid decision making :

• Focus on the game-changing decisions, ones that will help an organization create value and serve its purpose.
• Convene only necessary meetings, and eliminate lengthy reports. Turn unnecessary meetings into emails, and watch productivity bloom. For necessary meetings, provide short, well-prepared prereads to aid in decision making.
• Clarify the roles of decision makers and other voices. Who has a vote, and who has a voice?
• Push decision-making authority to the front line—and tolerate mistakes.

Introducing McKinsey Explainers : Direct answers to complex questions

How can business leaders effectively delegate decision making.

Business is more complex and dynamic than ever, meaning business leaders are faced with needing to make more decisions in less time. Decision making takes up an inordinate amount of management’s time—up to 70 percent for some executives—which leads to inefficiencies and opportunity costs.

As discussed above, organizations should treat different types of decisions differently . Decisions should be classified  according to their frequency, risk, and importance. Delegated decisions are the most mysterious for many organizations: they are the most frequent, and yet the least understood. Only about a quarter of survey respondents  report that their organizations make high-quality and speedy delegated decisions. And yet delegated decisions, because they happen so often, can have a big impact on organizational culture.

The key to better delegated decisions is to empower employees by giving them the authority and confidence to act. That means not simply telling employees which decisions they can or can’t make; it means giving employees the tools they need to make high-quality decisions and the right level of guidance as they do so.

Here’s how to support delegation and employee empowerment:

• Ensure that your organization has a well-defined, universally understood strategy. When the strategic intent of an organization is clear, empowerment is much easier because it allows teams to pull in the same direction.
• Clearly define roles and responsibilities. At the foundation of all empowerment efforts is a clear understanding of who is responsible for what, including who has input and who doesn’t.
• Invest in capability building (and coaching) up front. To help managers spend meaningful coaching time, organizations should also invest in managers’ leadership skills.
• Build an empowerment-oriented culture. Leaders should role model mindsets that promote empowerment, and managers should build the coaching skills they want to see. Managers and employees, in particular, will need to get comfortable with failure as a necessary step to success.
• Decide when to get involved. Managers should spend effort up front to decide what is worth their focused attention. They should know when it’s appropriate to provide close guidance and when not to.

How can you guard against bias in decision making?

Cognitive bias is real. We all fall prey, no matter how we try to guard ourselves against it. And cognitive and organizational bias undermines good decision making, whether you’re choosing what to have for lunch or whether to put in a bid to acquire another company.

Here are some of the most common cognitive biases and strategies for how to avoid them:

• Confirmation bias. Often, when we already believe something, our minds seek out information to support that belief—whether or not it is actually true. Confirmation bias  involves overweighting evidence that supports our belief, underweighting evidence against our belief, or even failing to search impartially for evidence in the first place. Confirmation bias is one of the most common traps organizational decision makers fall into. One famous—and painful—example of confirmation bias is when Blockbuster passed up the opportunity  to buy a fledgling Netflix for $50 million in 2000. (Actually, that’s putting it politely. Netflix executives remember being “laughed out” of Blockbuster’s offices.) Fresh off the dot-com bubble burst of 2000, Blockbuster executives likely concluded that Netflix had approached them out of desperation—not that Netflix actually had a baby unicorn on its hands.
• Herd mentality. First observed by Charles Mackay in his 1841 study of crowd psychology, herd mentality happens when information that’s available to the group is determined to be more useful than privately held knowledge. Individuals buy into this bias because there’s safety in the herd. But ignoring competing viewpoints might ultimately be costly. To counter this, try a teardown exercise , wherein two teams use scenarios, advanced analytics, and role-playing to identify how a herd might react to a decision, and to ensure they can refute public perceptions.
• Sunk-cost fallacy. Executives frequently hold onto underperforming business units or projects because of emotional or legacy attachment . Equally, business leaders hate shutting projects down . This, researchers say, is due to the ingrained belief that if everyone works hard enough, anything can be turned into gold. McKinsey research indicates two techniques for understanding when to hold on and when to let go. First, change the burden of proof from why an asset should be cut to why it should be retained. Next, categorize business investments according to whether they should be grown, maintained, or disposed of—and follow clearly differentiated investment rules  for each group.
• Ignoring unpleasant information. Researchers call this the “ostrich effect”—when people figuratively bury their heads in the sand , ignoring information that will make their lives more difficult. One study, for example, found that investors were more likely to check the value of their portfolios when the markets overall were rising, and less likely to do so when the markets were flat or falling. One way to help get around this is to engage in a readout process, where individuals or teams summarize discussions as they happen. This increases the likelihood that everyone leaves a meeting with the same understanding of what was said.
• Halo effect. Important personal and professional choices are frequently affected by people’s tendency to make specific judgments based on general impressions . Humans are tempted to use simple mental frames to understand complicated ideas, which means we frequently draw conclusions faster than we should. The halo effect is particularly common in hiring decisions. To avoid this bias, structured interviews can help mitigate the essentializing tendency. When candidates are measured against indicators, intuition is less likely to play a role.

For more common biases and how to beat them, check out McKinsey’s Bias Busters Collection .

Learn more about Strategy & Corporate Finance consulting  at McKinsey—and check out job opportunities related to decision making if you’re interested in working at McKinsey.

Articles referenced include:

• “ Bias busters: When the crowd isn’t necessarily wise ,” McKinsey Quarterly , May 23, 2022, Eileen Kelly Rinaudo , Tim Koller , and Derek Schatz
• “ Boards and decision making ,” April 8, 2021, Aaron De Smet , Frithjof Lund , Suzanne Nimocks, and Leigh Weiss
• “ To unlock better decision making, plan better meetings ,” November 9, 2020, Aaron De Smet , Simon London, and Leigh Weiss
• “ Reimagine decision making to improve speed and quality ,” September 14, 2020, Julie Hughes , J. R. Maxwell , and Leigh Weiss
• “ For smarter decisions, empower your employees ,” September 9, 2020, Aaron De Smet , Caitlin Hewes, and Leigh Weiss
• “ Bias busters: Lifting your head from the sand ,” McKinsey Quarterly , August 18, 2020, Eileen Kelly Rinaudo
• “ Decision making in uncertain times ,” March 24, 2020, Andrea Alexander, Aaron De Smet , and Leigh Weiss
• “ Bias busters: Avoiding snap judgments ,” McKinsey Quarterly , November 6, 2019, Tim Koller , Dan Lovallo, and Phil Rosenzweig
• “ Three keys to faster, better decisions ,” McKinsey Quarterly , May 1, 2019, Aaron De Smet , Gregor Jost , and Leigh Weiss
• “ Decision making in the age of urgency ,” April 30, 2019, Iskandar Aminov, Aaron De Smet , Gregor Jost , and David Mendelsohn
• “ Bias busters: Pruning projects proactively ,” McKinsey Quarterly , February 6, 2019, Tim Koller , Dan Lovallo, and Zane Williams
• “ Decision making in your organization: Cutting through the clutter ,” McKinsey Quarterly , January 16, 2018, Aaron De Smet , Simon London, and Leigh Weiss
• “ Untangling your organization’s decision making ,” McKinsey Quarterly , June 21, 2017, Aaron De Smet , Gerald Lackey, and Leigh Weiss
• “ Are you ready to decide? ,” McKinsey Quarterly , April 1, 2015, Philip Meissner, Olivier Sibony, and Torsten Wulf.

Want to know more about decision making?

Related articles.

What is productivity?

What is the future of work?

What is leadership?

• Business Essentials
• Leadership & Management
• Credential of Leadership, Impact, and Management in Business (CLIMB)
• Entrepreneurship & Innovation
• Digital Transformation
• Finance & Accounting
• Business in Society
• For Organizations
• Support Portal
• Media Coverage
• Founding Donors
• Leadership Team

• Harvard Business School →
• HBS Online →
• Business Insights →

Business Insights

Harvard Business School Online's Business Insights Blog provides the career insights you need to achieve your goals and gain confidence in your business skills.

• Career Development
• Communication
• Decision-Making
• Earning Your MBA
• Negotiation
• News & Events
• Productivity
• Staff Spotlight
• Student Profiles
• Work-Life Balance
• AI Essentials for Business
• Alternative Investments
• Business Analytics
• Business Strategy
• Business and Climate Change
• Design Thinking and Innovation
• Digital Marketing Strategy
• Disruptive Strategy
• Economics for Managers
• Entrepreneurship Essentials
• Financial Accounting
• Global Business
• Launching Tech Ventures
• Leadership Principles
• Leadership, Ethics, and Corporate Accountability
• Leading Change and Organizational Renewal
• Leading with Finance
• Management Essentials
• Negotiation Mastery
• Organizational Leadership
• Power and Influence for Positive Impact
• Strategy Execution
• Sustainable Business Strategy
• Sustainable Investing
• Winning with Digital Platforms

7 Ways to Improve Your Ethical Decision-Making

• 03 Aug 2023

Effective decision-making is the cornerstone of any thriving business. According to a survey of 760 companies cited in the Harvard Business Review , decision effectiveness and financial results correlated at a 95 percent confidence level across countries, industries, and organization sizes.

Yet, making ethical decisions can be difficult in the workplace and often requires dealing with ambiguous situations.

If you want to become a more effective leader , here’s an overview of why ethical decision-making is important in business and how to be better at it.

Access your free e-book today.

The Importance of Ethical Decision-Making

Any management position involves decision-making .

“Even with formal systems in place, managers have a great deal of discretion in making decisions that affect employees,” says Harvard Business School Professor Nien-hê Hsieh in the online course Leadership, Ethics, and Corporate Accountability . “This is because many of the activities companies need to carry out are too complex to specify in advance.”

This is where ethical decision-making comes in. As a leader, your decisions influence your company’s culture, employees’ motivation and productivity, and business processes’ effectiveness.

It also impacts your organization’s reputation—in terms of how customers, partners, investors, and prospective employees perceive it—and long-term success.

With such a large portion of your company’s performance relying on your guidance, here are seven ways to improve your ethical decision-making.

1. Gain Clarity Around Personal Commitments

You may be familiar with the saying, “Know thyself.” The first step to including ethics in your decision-making process is defining your personal commitments.

To gain clarity around those, Hsieh recommends asking:

• What’s core to my identity? How do I perceive myself?
• What lines or boundaries will I not cross?
• What kind of life do I want to live?
• What type of leader do I want to be?

Once you better understand your core beliefs, values, and ideals, it’s easier to commit to ethical guidelines in the workplace. If you get stuck when making challenging decisions, revisit those questions for guidance.

2. Overcome Biases

A bias is a systematic, often unconscious inclination toward a belief, opinion, perspective, or decision. It influences how you perceive and interpret information, make judgments, and behave.

Bias is often based on:

• Personal experience
• Cultural background
• Social conditioning
• Individual preference

It exists in the workplace as well.

“Most of the time, people try to act fairly, but personal beliefs or attitudes—both conscious and subconscious—affect our ability to do so,” Hsieh says in Leadership, Ethics, and Corporate Accountability .

There are two types of bias:

• Explicit: A bias you’re aware of, such as ageism.
• Implicit: A bias that operates outside your awareness, such as cultural conditioning.

Whether explicit or implicit, you must overcome bias to make ethical, fair decisions.

Related: How to Overcome Stereotypes in Your Organization

3. Reflect on Past Decisions

The next step is reflecting on previous decisions.

“By understanding different kinds of bias and how they can show themselves in the workplace, we can reflect on past decisions, experiences, and emotions to help identify problem areas,” Hsieh says in the course.

Reflect on your decisions’ processes and the outcomes. Were they favorable? What would you do differently? Did bias affect them?

Through analyzing prior experiences, you can learn lessons that help guide your ethical decision-making.

4. Be Compassionate

Decisions requiring an ethical lens are often difficult, such as terminating an employee.

“Termination decisions are some of the hardest that managers will ever have to make,” Hsieh says in Leadership, Ethics, and Corporate Accountability . “These decisions affect real people with whom we often work every day and who are likely to depend on their job for their livelihood.”

Such decisions require a compassionate approach. Try imagining yourself in the other person’s shoes, and think about what you would want to hear. Doing so allows you to approach decision-making with more empathy.

5. Focus on Fairness

Being “fair” in the workplace is often ambiguous, but it’s vital to ethical decision-making.

“Fairness is not only an ethical response to power asymmetries in the work environment,” Hsieh says in Leadership, Ethics, and Corporate Accountability . “Fairness–and having a successful organizational culture–can benefit the organization economically and legally as well.”

It’s particularly important to consider fairness in the context of your employees. According to Leadership, Ethics, and Corporate Accountability , operationalizing fairness in employment relationships requires:

• Legitimate expectations: Expectations stemming from a promise or regular practice that employees can anticipate and rely on.
• Procedural fairness: Concern with whether decisions are made and carried out impartially, consistently, and transparently.
• Distributive fairness: The fair allocation of opportunities, benefits, and burdens based on employees’ efforts or contributions.

Keeping these aspects of fairness in mind can be the difference between a harmonious team and an employment lawsuit. When in doubt, ask yourself: “If I or someone I loved was at the receiving end of this decision, what would I consider ‘fair’?”

6. Take an Individualized Approach

Not every employee is the same. Your relationships with team members, managers, and organizational leaders differ based on factors like context and personality types.

“Given the personal nature of employment relationships, your judgment and actions in these areas will often require adjustment according to each specific situation,” Hsieh explains in Leadership, Ethics, and Corporate Accountability .

One way to achieve this is by tailoring your decision-making based on employees’ values and beliefs. For example, if a colleague expresses concerns about a project’s environmental impact, explore eco-friendly approaches that align with their values.

Another way you can customize your ethical decision-making is by accommodating employees’ cultural differences. Doing so can foster a more inclusive work environment and boost your team’s performance .

7. Accept Feedback

Ethical decision-making is susceptible to gray areas and often met with dissent, so it’s critical to be approachable and open to feedback .

The benefits of receiving feedback include:

• Learning from mistakes.
• Having more opportunities to exhibit compassion, fairness, and transparency.
• Identifying blind spots you weren’t aware of.
• Bringing your team into the decision-making process.

While such conversations can be uncomfortable, don’t avoid them. Accepting feedback will not only make you a more effective leader but also help your employees gain a voice in the workplace.

Ethical Decision-Making Is a Continuous Learning Process

Ethical decision-making doesn’t come with right or wrong answers—it’s a continuous learning process.

“There often is no right answer, only imperfect solutions to difficult problems,” Hsieh says. “But even without a single ‘right’ answer, making thoughtful, ethical decisions can make a major difference in the lives of your employees and colleagues.”

By taking an online course, such as Leadership, Ethics, and Corporate Accountability , you can develop the frameworks and tools to make effective decisions that benefit all aspects of your business.

Ready to improve your ethical decision-making? Enroll in Leadership, Ethics, and Corporate Accountability —one of our online leadership and management courses —and download our free e-book on how to become a more effective leader.

About the Author

• Qualifications search
• Apprenticeship search
• Occupational maps
• Ensuring quality
• Qualifications
• Apprenticeships
• Have your say
• Search the Apprenticeships

Team leader or supervisor

This apprenticeship is in revision

A revised version of this apprenticeship standard has been agreed and is available for information only at present. In the meantime, the version below remains approved for delivery. Further details of this and other occupational standards in revision are available in the revisions status report.

Overview of the role

Managing teams and projects to meet a private, public or voluntary organisation's goals.

Reference Number: ST0384

Details of standard, o ccupation.

A Team leader or ​supervisor is a first line management role, with operational and project responsibilities or responsibility for managing a team to deliver a clearly defined outcome. They provide direction, instructions and guidance to ensure the achievement of set goals. Working in the private, public or third sector and in all sizes of organisation, specific responsibilities will vary, but the knowledge, skills and behaviours needed will be the same whatever the role.

Key responsibilities are likely to include supporting, managing and developing team members, managing projects, planning and monitoring workloads and resources, delivering operational plans, resolving problems, and building relationships internally and externally.

Typical job titles: 

Supervisor, Team leader, Project officer, Shift supervisor, Foreperson, and Shift manager.

Entr y requirements

The entry requirement for this apprenticeship will be decided by each employer, but may typically be five GCSEs at Grade C or higher.

Requirements: knowledge, skills and behaviours

Typically this apprenticeship will take 12 – 18 months

Qu a l i fi cations

Apprentices without level 2 English and maths will need to achieve this level prior to taking the end-point assessment.

P ro g r e ssion

On completion, apprentices may choose to register as Associate Members with the Chartered Management Institute and/or the Institute of leadership and management, to support their professional career development and progression.

Rev i e w date

This standard should be reviewed within three years of its approval.

Crown copyright © 2024. You may re-use this information (not including logos) free of charge in any format or medium, under the terms of the Open Government Licence. Visit www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/doc/open-government-licence

Team leader and supervisor assessment plan

Find apprenticeship training providers that deliver this standard, find an end-point assessment organisation, are you considering applying to assess against this standard.

If you are interested in becoming an apprentice -

you can find out more at www.gov.uk becoming an apprentice.

You can also search for an apprenticeship.

For all other queries please contact us.

If you are a potential employer -

you can find out more about hiring apprentices at www.gov.uk/employinganapprentice.

If you have a query about the apprenticeship standard content or Trailblazer membership

the trailblazer contact for this standard is [email protected] [email protected]

Print the occupational standard (including PDF)

Version log.

Share this page

Is this webpage useful, thank you for your feedback, tell us about your experience.

• SUGGESTED TOPICS
• The Magazine
• Newsletters
• Managing Yourself
• Managing Teams
• Work-life Balance
• The Big Idea
• Data & Visuals
• Reading Lists
• Case Selections
• HBR Learning
• Topic Feeds
• Account Settings
• Email Preferences

Decision making and problem solving

• Change management
• Competitive strategy
• Corporate strategy
• Customer strategy

Is it Time for Mutiny?

• Patrick J. Murphy
• April 09, 2013

The New Management Gurus

• Thomas H. Davenport
• May 05, 2008

The Art of Evidence-Based Medicine

• Christopher Worsham
• Anupam B. Jena
• January 30, 2019

Treat Employees like Adults

• Frank Furedi
• From the May 2005 Issue

The Secrets to Successful Strategy Execution

• Gary L. Neilson
• Karla L. Martin
• Elizabeth Powers
• From the June 2008 Issue

Find the 15-Minute Competitive Advantage

• Rosabeth Moss Kanter
• November 09, 2009

In a Real Emergency, Should Your Company or Your Community Come First?

• Eric J. McNulty
• December 09, 2009

Does Better Judgment Come With Age?

• Brook Manville
• August 24, 2010

How to Say No to Things You Want to Do

• Dorie Clark
• January 04, 2016

When Human Judgment Works Well, and When it Doesn't

• Andrew McAfee
• January 06, 2014

Research: People Use Less Energy When They Think Their Neighbors Care About the Environment

• Jon M. Jachimowicz
• Oliver Hauser
• Julie O’Brien
• Erin Sherman
• Adam Galinsky
• January 28, 2019

The Economy Hasn’t Changed Innovation

• Scott D. Anthony
• August 18, 2011

How a Video Game Helped People Make Better Decisions

• Carey K. Morewedge
• October 13, 2015

Is Anyone Really Responsible for Your Company’s Data Security?

• Joel Brenner
• June 19, 2013

Increase the Odds of Being Right

• Harvard Management Update
• February 29, 2008

Betting on the Future: The Virtues of Contingent Contracts

• Max H. Bazerman
• James J. Gillespie
• From the September–October 1999 Issue

Critical Thinking Is About Asking Better Questions

• John Coleman
• April 22, 2022

How to Embrace Complex Change

• Linda Brimm
• From the September 2015 Issue

Don't Let Layoffs Ruin Customer Service

• Jimmy Guterman
• March 23, 2009

Let's Hold Consultants Accountable for Results

• Ron Ashkenas
• September 17, 2013

Cat Fight in the Pet Food Industry (A)

• David J. Collis
• Toby Stuart
• April 09, 1991

Spike's Indoor Beach Volleyball and Rock Climbing Inc.

• Elizabeth M.A. Grasby
• Lindsay Brock
• January 21, 2009

Utah Symphony and Utah Opera: A Merger Proposal

• Thomas J. DeLong
• David L. Ager
• June 14, 2004

Merton Truck Co.

• Anirudh Dhebar
• March 24, 1989

Change Leadership: The Kotter Collection (5 Ebooks)

• John P. Kotter
• Dan S. Cohen
• August 12, 2014

Mount Everest--1996

• Michael A. Roberto
• Gina M. Carioggia
• November 12, 2002

Jeanne Lewis at Staples, Inc. (C)

• Linda A. Hill
• Kristin C. Doughty
• March 29, 2000

Jeanne Lewis at Staples, Inc. (A) (Abridged)

• Jennifer M. Suesse
• March 23, 2000

HBR Guide to Designing Your Retirement

• Harvard Business Review
• July 11, 2023

Move Fast and Fix Things: The Trusted Leader's Guide to Solving Hard Problems

• Frances X. Frei
• Anne Morriss
• October 03, 2023

Prediction Machines, Updated and Expanded: The Simple Economics of Artificial Intelligence

• Ajay Agrawal
• Joshua Gans
• Avi Goldfarb
• November 15, 2022

Project Evaluation in Emerging Markets: Exxon Mobil, Oil, and Argentina

• Javier Estrada
• Gabriela Giannattasio
• Lidia Nikolova
• September 14, 2006

Genzyme Center (C)

• Michael W. Toffel
• September 01, 2009

Smarter Collaboration: A New Approach to Breaking Down Barriers and Transforming Work

• Heidi K. Gardner
• Ivan Matviak
• November 01, 2022

John Rogers and Ariel Investments

• Steven S. Rogers
• September 13, 2017

Evaluating an Action Plan

• January 31, 1994

Experience, Opportunity, and Developing Your Career (HBR Work Smart Series)

• Mimi Aboubaker
• Ruchika Tulshyan
• Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic
• Deborah Grayson Riegel
• May 14, 2024

The Stories Behind the Numbers

• Francisco Roman
• January 29, 2015

Saint Elizabeth: Innovation in Health Care

• David Barrett
• Ramasastry Chandrasekhar
• December 08, 2016

Duke Energy and the Nuclear Renaissance

• Richard H.K. Vietor
• Forest L. Reinhardt
• September 12, 2011

What the Best Leaders Know — and What Skills They Develop

Popular topics, partner center.