Exploring processes for making decisions in business has me reflecting on the importance of investigating the context, the frame or the orientation.
I have been referring participants in our leadership development program to the OODA Loop as a highly practical and agile process for making decisions. After the first phase of “observing” you transition to “orientation” – where you acknowledge and assess the orientation you bring to the information and insights gathered in the observe phase. Here it’s fascinating to examine the divergence that comes from age, experience, cultural heritage, personal integrity, sustainability for the business and the focus you are asked to bring.
It was devastating to read about the role of orientation or “frames” in the inquiry into the Challenger space shuttle disaster where concerned engineers had expressed the need to abort the launch. However they were invited and encouraged to change their orientation – away from engineer to that of management with sunk costs, performance and return on investment…….they changed their decision and seven astronauts lost their lives.
Investing the time and energy into debriefing decisions is critical if we want agility – when leaders learn from every decision made we start to improve the quality and speed of every decision, instead of sitting in the place of ego that stops too many leaders from truly exploring their decisions with the richness, transparency and honesty that enables growth.
