Fatigue makes fools of us all

Ever felt tired of burning energy in a ‘heroic battle’ trying to convince people in one of those lengthy corporate decisions making processes? Did you experience the adverse effects of 'low quality' decisions which were the effects of irrational trade-offs? Then decision fatigue might be at play.

Decision fatigue is the emotional x mental strain resulting from a burden of choices to be made, which leads to low quality of outcomes. Fatigue is often the result of a lack of clarity, worry and frustration. Fatigue is not necessarily the result of 'a day of hard work' itself.

You have race-horses and rodeo-horses. Which horse do you prefer riding?

When complexity is increasing and the acceleration is accelerating into the ‘unknow’, people might be struggling to effectively think clear in discrete layers conceptualizing their context. Strategic, tactical and operational decision layers might start blending into each other and ‘spontaneously cross pollinate’ your organization. The responsibilities and burden for the decision-making might start to shift from people who know something to people who really don’t know anything. Then, who owns the organizational alignment?

When nothing is clear, everything remains possible….and HIPPO’s are born.

When people fail to see their business endeavour as a connected and coherent value chain, the ‘hierarchical’ decision-making process overwrites trust x skills x relevant experiences. The focus starts to shift inwardly into the enterprise’s structure as articulated by the org chart. Anxiety x Fear kicks in and no one individual is no longer functionally responsible for overseeing the enterprise from end to end.

Who is actually responsible? The answer cannot be “nobody”, nor can it be “I don’t know”. Too often functional leadership starts to protect and optimize their own interests, agendas, domains and components, rather than align and improve the decisions makings process. Silos emerge, tension builds and ‘HiPPO’s emerge [HiPPO: highest-paid person's opinion]. The number of decisions to be taken exponentially increases and effective leadership diminishes slowly and gradually. Decision fatigue sets in.

Activity is mistaken for progress.

The ‘Analysis Paralysis’ emerges, and every need to make an ever-growing number of decisions leads to more requests to compile reports, memos and calls to educate the hierarchical structures on operational matters. Activity is then easily mistaken for progress.

Your decision making requires sound judgment, courage, time, and energy to address the challenges at hand. The frantic activity of business as usual can get in the way of the in-depth discussions and tough choices that need to take place regularly. Without vision x understanding many organizations lack the alignment x direction x ambition to fulfil their full potential.

How to shape a better-structured decision-making process?

Rational decision-making can be uncovered in a series of sequential steps which decision-makers should consider if their goal is to maximize the quality of their outcomes. In other words, if you want to make sure that you make the best choice, going through sequential formal steps of the rational decision-making model may make sense. Structured decision-making processes include rational, bounded rationality, intuitive, and creative decision making.

Does your organization structure its decision-making processes to reach its full potential? Curious to understand how - depending on the circumstances – you can address these challenges by ‘unleashing’ the great coach within you?

Then let’s get started with a ‘get to know each other’ coffee over zoom.

Yours Sincerely,

Boris Hendrik A. Colruyt