How to Build a Roadmap for Strategic Decision-Making
Data-driven decision-making is receiving considerable attention to make sound business decisions. Business decisions are the lifeblood of a company, and our choices as leaders often determine whether we succeed or fail. However, data-driven decision-making is only a component of strategic decision-making, with significant decisions affecting an entire company or large group of people.
What is a Strategic Decision?
Too many business decisions are made in the heat of the moment without any strategy to support them. While there are certain situations where a quick assessment is required, having a framework in place against which you can evaluate each decision can keep even hasty decisions from being the wrong ones. What truly sets exceptional leaders apart is how they tackle making informed, data-driven decisions when it matters most.
Step 1: Categorizing Decisions
According to the Harvard Business Review, part of the strategy should involve categorizing decisions, so you know when more strategic decision-making is needed.
Decisions that should not involve a larger framework are:
- Routine choices in daily operations
- Minor planning, such as planning a project timeline
- Minor competitive decisions, such as launching a competitive marketing campaign
Phil Rosenzweig, a marketing manager for Hewlett Packard and a professor at Harvard Business School, identifies decisions to which you want to apply a more robust strategy as ones where you can actively influence outcomes and outperform competitors. These could include launching a product in a new market, acquiring another firm, or anything that will materially impact the company's direction and/or profits. You want to slow down as much as possible for these types of decisions and employ a strategic framework.
Step 2: Building Your Strategic Framework
A strategic framework involves two steps: logical analysis and reliance on instinct.
a) Logical Analysis
This is where executives lean on business school by building backgrounders on the situation, calling in consultants where they may be needed, and scrutinizing financials. This is also the stage where one locates the datasets that must be used for data-driven analysis. The end result of this stage should be a background reference document that contains all of the data and facts required to make the decision. This stage represents about 90% of the work, but the next stage will determine the outcome.
b) Instinctual Analysis
Sometimes, even if all the facts point to the right decision, something off-putting may be challenging to put your finger on. Good leaders heed their instincts and request more information about the items bothering them. The correct data may make that feeling go away, or it may not. In the end, this instinct makes or breaks a leader, which is why executives are so highly paid - good ones generally make the right calls, even in the face of everything telling them the decision is not the right one to make.
Step 3: Building a Case With Data-Driven Analysis
Once the decision is made, you should support it with the facts uncovered from your datasets during the logical analysis phase. This is why it is vitally important that you have good analytics in place for everything from your financials to your marketing to your workforce. Without data, you won’t be able to make the right strategic decisions. The foundations behind data-driven decision-making are the systems used to collect that data in the first place.
This is where a solution like Prodoscore becomes invaluable. Prodoscore provides actionable insights into how your workforce operates, offering data on business application usage, collaboration patterns, and project timelines. This information can be crucial for validating strategic choices, identifying potential bottlenecks, and ensuring your team is aligned and productive.
Taking a methodical approach to essential decisions will always lead to better outcomes. It’s easy to make mistakes when you’re moving too quickly, and the simple act of taking a beat to gather information can keep you from making bad decisions. The entire process may seem plodding and burdensome, but winners always put in the work.
If you want a deep dive into your workforce analytics, consider Prodoscore, our employee productivity management solution. It measures so much more than productivity: which tools employees are using, how they are using them, and how they collaborate with their co-workers are just some of the analytics you can extract from the solution.
