Rapid feedback as a key to decision making

A hierarchical approach to running an organisation can cause problems. And this is most visible when we look at decision making.  In the “Scientific Management” model, decisions are made exclusively by managers.  It is assumed that they are always the best decision makers. Perhaps they are more experienced or more highly trained.  Perhaps the fact they have been promoted somehow proves they are more capable.

Let’s imagine there is a new feature request from a customer.  A decision needs to be made about how to proceed.  In a Taylorist model, the team will escalate this to their manager.  They may need to discuss this with other managers, or with their own manager. 

This will need meetings to be set up between the team and their manager. More meetings may be needed to bring in other managers.  With busy calendars, these meetings often occur on a weekly cadence, so it is not unusual for this process to take several weeks.

Escalation, especially in larger organisations, is inherently slow.

Decision making is a major area of waste.  Poppendieck identified delays and handoffs as key areas of inefficiency.  In a slow-moving environment, it may be acceptable to have slow decision making.  We can listen to the customer, escalate the requests through layers of management and wait weeks for a decision to come to the team.  This, after all, is the approach in the manufacturing world that Taylor was writing about.  In his day, it was more acceptable if responses to customers were slow or limited.

The need for rapid feedback

In the modern technology world, we rely on rapid feedback.  In any controlled system, feedback needs to be faster than change.  If we are riding a bicycle, you must respond to leaning by turning the handlebars.  If the response time is too long, you will wobble wildly and fall.

In a complex environment the situation is worse.  You cannot wholly predict how your actions will affect the outcome.  You will need to respond and then adjust your response according to the effect.  Feedback becomes even more tightly coupled.

Escalating responses up a hierarchy is just too slow an approach.  Worse still, managers are not typically the people with accurate, current data.  There is not only a delay in the response, but there is a delay in the data which is being used for the decision.  The local teams understand the local situation while abstracted management are unlikely to do so.

We need a decision making process which is tailored to this fast moving environment.  Decisions need to be focussed and rapid.  We need to minimise the time and effort from making unnecessary decisions.

Lowest viable level

These factors suggest that a simple hierarchy is not going to work well for our technology company.  Increasingly successful technology organizations are moving to more distributed management systems.  The main characteristic of these is the use of lowest viable level decision making.  We aim to make decisions quickly and efficiently.  This is done by taking the decisions at the point as close as is possible to the situation being decided.

Of course we do not expect every individual to be able to make every decision.  That is where the term “viable” is used.  Teams may be unable to make decisions because of impact on other teams, or because of access to resources or because wider business context is needed.  Here a leader will need supply management services to support the team. However, team autonomy is critical to effective technology companies.

Taylorist approaches aim to escalate decisions and typically tend to make them at the highest possible level.  Technology companies tend instead to make decisions at the lowest viable level.  Every hierarchy loop we avoid saves time and gives more rapid feedback.  As well as the speed, this means that the people with the latest information are at the heart of the decision.

Successful technology companies tend to make decisions at the lowest viable level. 

Good practices

As an Agile leader you will need to coach the team in working more autonomously. Self-managing teams do not just happen by themselves and they will need support.

Pushing more decisions to the team requires us to rethink a significant amount of traditional management. In particular you will want to be considering the following:

Most critically, managers need to step back from decision making.  They must avoid over-asserting their views.  It is so easy for a manager to give “their” answer and then be surprised when there are no other opinions. Unless empowered, teams will tend to continue to ask for approval.  The manager will need to encourage independent decision-making among team members

Teams need to be empowered to make decisions.  They need to be taught which decisions are appropriate and which should be escalated.  This requires coaching and mentoring from the managers.

In order to make decisions quickly at the team level, the team need to be kept informed.  This means that managers will need to communicate well and give more contextual information to the team.

Decisions are not being taken in one place and are now distributed. This adds a level of complication. Team decisions will need to be broadcast to managers and to other teams to ensure that everyone is aware of what has been decided. Tools such as decision logs can be very effective.

With more decision makers, we cannot rely on “innate knowledge” of past decisions.  This means that teams and managers must keep better records such as decision logs to record the key decisions being made.