Solution-Building During a Crisis (Continued)

A short sidestep: a look at current issues in decision-making and how Solution-Building™ can play an important role, continued.

In my last post, I made the point that in times of chaos, uncertainty, and crisis, the need for careful, calm, rational, informed, and clear decisions becomes acute. If those responsible for making those decisions, as well as others who then must see that they are carried out, fail to do that, the result may well be disaster. For a business, that could mean anything from poor performance to bankruptcy. For a society, the result could be social upheaval, a change in government, or even something worse.

In such times, it is natural for employees to turn to their senior management team for the decisions. This can be a heavy responsibility and it is natural to expect that senior individual or group to understand the need for and have the capacity to deliver those careful (etc.) decisions. At a societal level, citizens turn to their governmental leaders for these decisions. 

Individuals are somewhat different in that they, themselves, are the decision-makers. I include family groups here since in many cases one family member is making the major decisions. (That, of course, is a generalization; in many families decisions are made jointly, but the family unit is not a business or a governmental body. Decisions are made in a different context than those of either businesses or governments.) 

It is, of course, my contention that the process of Solution-Building is a very important tool in examining issues, making decisions, and solving problems. My goal today is to begin to look at how Solution-Building can do that. 

A warning: I will be summarizing, to an extent, the Solution-Building process here, which will include very short explanations of the Guidelines that I have not yet discussed. I plan to go into them in more detail in later posts, but given the current events of Covid-19 and the associated financial turmoil, I want to go into what should be, or should have, been done if this rational and careful process had been followed. In the interest of avoiding straying into politics and of assigning blame to any individuals, I do not intend to discuss specific decisions (but may use limited examples), but the processes that could have been used to reach them.

The first three Guidelines were:

1. Everyone plays by the same rules.
2. You must come to the group ready and willing to participate.
3. Treat everyone in the group with courtesy and respect.

The reasoning behind them was discussed in some detail in recent posts so we don’t have to go into them. If you are new to this blog, or want to review the discussions of these Guidelines, you can find them in the blogs posted from December 2019 through February 2020, on the book’s website, www.movingbeyondcompromise.com.

The other Guidelines are:

4. Act as though the person whose respect is most important to you is watching how you behave.
5. No personal agendas allowed.
6. Park your ego at the door or you don’t get a seat at the table.
7. Once you put your idea and/or opinion out there it no longer belongs to you.
8. Reaching agreement is more important than being “right”.
9. Once the group has made a decision and moved forward, everyone must support the decision and you cannot complain if things do not work out.

All nine of these Guidelines are essential to the process of Solution-Building. They are all consistent with the principles of commitment, objectivity, and courtesy. I will go through a quick explanation of the rationales for the last six before talking about how they could be, or could have been, applied to decisions being made now in the wake of current issues. 

Guideline 4 is about maintaining courtesy throughout the process of decision-making or problem-solving. We all have someone, a favorite relative, a teacher, a minister, or someone in our lives who is important enough to us that we would not want them to see us behave in a manner of which they would disapprove. If we picture that person in the room, watching the process unfold, our behavior is more likely to be improved.

Guideline 5 is about objectivity. When a participant’s personal agenda is his most important consideration in the decision-making effort, his objectivity is severely impaired and may even be nonexistent. Personal agendas are about getting what the person wants, not about getting to the best and most effective decision.

Number 6 is critical. Ego can be worse than personal agendas in decision-making. Ego can be the archenemy of objectivity. I say “can be” because, as I have said in earlier posts, we all have some level of ego. When that ego goes unchecked and leads a person to believe that he is the most knowledgeable, most capable, and smartest in the room, or if he has some kind of need to be “right” in all things, it can destroy his ability to look objectively at any fact or bit of information that does not support his position or preconceived decision. He then will argue, cajole, deny fact, even invent his own facts, and otherwise work to prevent any other decision from being made. 

Guideline 7 is somewhat unusual to many of us, since we tend to “own” our ideas and treat them in some ways like our children, defending them against all arguments against them. This Guideline is about giving up that ownership once we put our ideas, thoughts, and opinions out there. If we can then visualize them as not belonging to our self but to the entire group, we will find it much easier to examine them dispassionately and see the flaws as well as the strengths. Also, if we do not own them personally, other participants, as they literally dissect them and find those flaws, will not be seen as attacking us personally but helping us understand how our ideas can fit into the overall effort to make decisions.

Guideline 8 is about the commitment to actually get to a decision, rather than engage in endless debate. In truth, it is best if the group can reach a unanimous position but that often is not the case. Having examined the alternatives carefully and rationally, there may well be more than one that will be considered as potentially effective. The group must make a decision, so part of the commitment is that when unanimity is absent, a vote is taken and the majority view is accepted.

Guideline 9 is about giving the decision a chance to be shown to be effective, in other words to deal with whatever the issue is. No matter what each individual may feel about what the decision should have been, they will support it and work to give it the best chance of proving effective. They will not undermine the decision or let it be known that they did not support it. Decisions can easily be sabotaged by such direct, or even indirect, messages that it is okay to ignore the decision made and not make the effort to implement it. One factor to consider is that, should the decision prove to not be as effective as desired for any reason, the process of Solution-Building has also yielded a number of potentially effective alternatives that have been evaluated and often can be fairly easy and quickly put into place.

This overview will be the basis for looking at decisions related to the current situation with the Covid-19 virus and other associated issues. The next entry in this series, which should accompany this one, will address this subject.