Building Individual and Team Capacity Through

Faster, Better Decision Making

by Alan Fine

Building Individual and Team Capacity Through

Faster, Better Decision Making

Strategy gets implemented by the actions that people take. Peoples actions are based on their conscious or unconscious decisions.

n today's economic climate where theres more competition and fewer resources, everyone has to nd ways to do more with less. Traditionally, both leaders and their teams have met this challenge by working longer and harder. But there is a different way: building capacity from the Inside-Out. By building capacityrather than just demanding more results and more output you unlock capability, productivity, and independence. By tapping into the potential thats already inside, everyone can do more with less. How do you build capacity? The key is to tap into knowledge and skills that people already have but arent using. Think about it this way, strategy gets implemented by the actions that people take. Peoples actions are based on their conscious or unconscious decisions. If we can accelerate their decision making, we can accelerate the implementation of strategy. If we borrow from physics, where velocity is speed in a direction, we can adapt this concept to decision making. Decision Velocity would therefore be the speed and direction, or speed and accuracy, of decision making. Another way to state this is, decisions lead to action and action leads to performance. Accelerating Decision Velocity can be done very easily by giving others a simple framework for making decisions and solving problemsa roadmap, if you will, whose nal destination is better performance.

THE GROW DECISION MAKING MODEL

Think of a road trip. If Im trying to navigate from New York to Los Angeles without the aid of a map or GPS unit, Ill likely drive all over the place at random. Time and efficiency is lost. If I have a good map, however, I can focus on the particular roads that will take me to my destination in a timely fashion. Applying this concept to peoples thinking, theres a very simple way to map decision making and create focus: the GROW Model. GROW is a map of the stages we go through when we make decisions: Goal: what we want to do Reality: circumstances were dealing with (or how we perceive them) Options: how we might move from our Reality to our Goal Way Forward: action we choose to take Most people dont approach these stages sequentially, however. Their thinking will often go all over the place, especially if they are under stress. Its like someone trying to score runs in baseball by running all over the eld instead of just stepping on each of the bases in turn. Its not impossible, but its a lot more difficult. If we show people how to be more systematic in moving through these four stages, we bring order, discipline, and focus to their decision making. In turn, this accelerates their Decision Velocity. We are building their capacity to use skills and knowledge they already possess.

ion Opt s

W ay Fo r
KNOWLEDGE

wa rd
WLEDGE KNO

Focus
Fire
Faith

WLEDGE KNO

Goal

Re a lit y
GROW Model
The GROW Model is a decision-making framework and a map of the stages we go through to solve problems.

WLEDGE KNO

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Building Individual and Team Capacity Through

Faster, Better Decision Making

BUILDING TEAM CAPACITY THROUGH GROW

Accelerating Decision Velocity is relatively easy when its just an individual. Its frequently more challenging when two or more people are involved in making the decision. In these situations, you have two (or more) versions of each of the stages of Goal, Reality, Options, and Way Forward. Depending on the personality of the people involved, they are likely to react to these differences by aggressively asserting their point of view or passively submitting to other peoples opinions, as well as a host of other reactions in between. These clashes of beliefs, logic, thinking styles, and priorities create interference causing people to show up anywhere from deant to submissive. All of which slows down the Decision Velocitythe speed AND accuracy of decision making. The solution, however, lies in the same systematic approach. Lets go back to the baseball analogy except this time, imagine that there are ve people running all over the eld between stepping on the bases! When people understand and use the same framework for navigating through the basesthe stages of decision makingyou get a collective acceleration of Decision Velocity.

4 Steps for Accelerating Collective Decision Velocity

1 2 3 4

Commit to the Goal: Everyone needs to be

committed to the same Goal. Occasionally this means disagree and commit (not disagree and withhold) for the sake of the group.

Listen to Reality: Everyones version of

Reality is legitimate even if it appears to be opposite. Everyones point of view on Reality should be heard and recorded. Without this, someone will experience it as their feelings being trampled on and will feel justied in withholding their participation.

Don't judge the Options: There should

be no judgment or evaluation of Options no matter how stupid or irrelevant they may sound until everyones ideas have been listed out (i.e., brainstormed properly).

Decision Making Under Stress

Decision making under stress is like trying to reach home base by running all over the eld instead of stepping on each of the bases in turn.

Agree to the Way Forward: The Way

Forward should have everyones agreement and commitment.

the stages of decision making

bases

When people understand and use the same framework for navigating through the

Understanding interference and how to apply the GROW Model in any decision-making environment will greatly accelerate the Decision Velocity that leads to action and therefore performance.

FINAL THOUGHT
Building capacity is much less about giving people more knowledge and much more about helping them use the knowledge they already have to accelerate their decision making. There is a huge capacity in everyone that we can tap into and by so doing we are going to get more done with less.

you get a collective acceleration of Decision Velocity.

When a group of people is following the stages, here are four steps to follow in each stage of GROW.

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A GROW Example:

TUFTS MEDICAL CENTER

A great institutional example of the effectiveness of building capacity through Decision Velocity is Tufts Medical Center in Massachusetts. During a two-year period from 2009 to 2011, the Learning & Development Department at Tufts trained more than 300 managers in the principles of the GROW Model, and the results were extraordinary. Jay Hargis, who was the director of Learning & Development at Tufts at the time, recalls his experience: I realized that if we used capacity-building techniques to increase the output of these trusted employees, we could increase the

Building Individual and Team Capacity Through

Faster, Better Decision Making

capacity of the department without adding staff. I wanted to help people to either manage their employees to success or out the door. GROW t in great with that philosophy. Once we implemented capacity-building training, we immediately got reports from managers that the program was starting to change the amount of time needed to resolve problems. The employees were becoming armed with the methodology of, my boss is going to want me to brainstorm how to solve this. We started offering practice sessions for the more difficult conversations and people reported that they felt comfortable and could tell the truth. Some of the managers with larger staffs started seeing greatly improved productivity and saw their teams operating in a much more cohesive manner. Several managers reported they were actually able to turn around employee behavior. One manager referred to it as voodooit works every time!

Prior to my time at the hospital, there had

capacity-building training, we immediately

got reports from managers that the program was starting to change the amount of time needed to resolve problems.

Once we implemented

not really been any management training. I quickly realized we really had to just start with the basics. I attended a public session taught by InsideOut Development trainers, and I was instantly struck with the thought that This could work.

The material was practical, easy to understand, and the GROW methodology just made sense. During that short public session, I saw growth in this group of strangers, and thought: Were onto something here. I noticed at Tufts that managers tended to have a core set of go-to people that they used.

Meet the Author: Alan Fine

Considered the pioneer of the modern day coaching movement, Alan Fine is the co-creator of the widely recognized GROW Model and the author of the New York Times Bestselling bookYou Already Know How to Be Great. As an international performance expert, keynote speaker, and well-respected executive and professional athlete coach, he has dedicated the past 25 years to helping people elevate their performance. Alan has worked with many of the worlds most respected athletes like PGA golfers Phillip Price and David Feherty, and organizations such as IBM, NASA, Honeywell, Gap, and Coca-Cola.

About InsideOut Development

Founded in 1985 by performance expert Alan Fine, InsideOut Development is a coaching, training, and consulting company based in Salt Lake City, Utah. We provide services for leadership, management, and front-line employees. InsideOut Development is recognized as a leader in developing manager-as-coach skills, and trains thousands of people annually using the GROW Model and other innovative tools and programs developed by Alan Fine and the InsideOut Development team. InsideOut was named a TrainingIndustry.com Top 20 training company in 2012 and 2013. To learn more, visit InsideOutDev.com.

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