Decision-making
A framework that has helped me understand that there are many ways to make a good decision
Hi! I’m Molly. I write about what it actually takes to lead inside growing, changing companies: the frameworks that help, the honest truth about what it feels like, and the messy work of shaping a career that actually fits.
Lessons is where those ideas live — both the writing and the conversations around it. (If you want to learn more about how Lessons and the community work, you can read more here.)
A long time ago I was an Instructor at the National Outdoor Leadership School (NOLS). NOLS uses wilderness expeditions as a way to teach leadership skills. I worked there immediately after college, teaching their curriculum and leading 75-day mountaineering and sea kayaking trips in Patagonia and Alaska. They have student courses for people in high school and college, as well as adults, and they also train professional organizations like NASA, the US military, Google, and Wharton Business School.
Working for NOLS and teaching their curriculum was hands down the most effective management training I’ve ever had, and I regularly rely on lessons from that time.
One NOLS framework that I go back to often is their group decision-making framework. That framework helps leaders understand that there are different ways to make decisions and develops their ability to use different decision-making styles that involve their team more, or less, depending on the situation.
I was indoctrinated with the framework early in my professional career, and the main things it taught me that I still think about today are:
(a) there are very clear, distinct types of decision-making that are good for different moments and types of decisions and
(b) the best organizations in the world are very methodical about how they make decisions, and use systems to select the best type of decision-making for the problem at hand
Even though the framework was designed for groups on long wilderness trips, leaders in any organization can use it to make better decisions for their company. It is always top of mind for me as I work with startups because honestly, most startup CEOs and new leaders are bad at being conscious and methodical around decision-making. They are either too team-reliant or too self-reliant and miss out on the variety of decision-making styles in between. To some extent, they miss out on the true power of a team.
My goal with sharing this framework is to push you to think about what your default style of decision-making is. I also want to help more new leaders realize that the best leaders use many forms of decision-making AND communicate well about why they’re using a certain style.
The NOLS group decision-making framework
The framework lays out 6 different ways to make decisions in a group. It also provides a simple way to figure out which style is best for which situation (e.g., you can bushwack for two hours straight uphill and get to camp quickly, or you can hike for five hours mostly on a trail and get to camp just before dinner – what’s the best way to make that decision with a group?).
