Focused Group Decision Time. Uninterrupted, no boundaries, no agendas, don’t get your feelings hurt or ego bruised focus time. When is the last time you cleared your calendar for a couple of hours and hashed out a difficult decision within your organization with this type of focus? I recently went though a process with two of my fellow Presconians where we unplugged, closed the door and looked at a decision from all angles and threw everything on the board to evaluate….and the results were amazing. It got me wondering why we don’t do this more? Often, employees become slaves to email – constantly checking, rechecking, replying, forwarding, etc. and it creates a lot of reactive energy. It is important to set aside time to be proactive and locking down and focusing on a solution with others is a proactive process.
I realized during my focus time with my co-workers that the three of us really couldn’t step on each others toes or hurt each others feelings if we didn’t like an idea, etc. That is a pretty awesome level of trust, huh? A lot of organizations prefer to have decisions like this hashed out in a no criticism atmosphere. I’d much rather have the criticism loaded down on me. Don’t you want to throw holes in an idea and move on if it has too many? There is a way to to express those points in a respectful way. I’d rather have a dissenting voice in a focused decision making session to ensure an idea is looked at from all angles.
The smaller the group the better for focused decision time. Ideally the group of individuals should have the comfort level and trust to be open and honest while brainstorming. If you don’t feel as though you can speak up and be honest within your organization, you might have bigger fish to fry.
So I guess what I’m trying to say is if you have a difficult decision to make, gather a couple of coworkers you trust and respect and hash it out…..don’t be a slave to your inbox. Be in front of people – connect and discuss!