Dealing with Power: Practical Insights to Decision-Making
Decision-making plays a critical role in shaping successful strategies, particularly within the realm of technology. While strategy is often viewed as a rigid plan or process, it fundamentally boils down to the strategic deployment of assets to achieve defined goals. Let's delve into the complexities of making sound decisions, especially in the fast-paced world of tech, to improve the quality and impact of your choices.
Strategy boils down to decisions on asset deployments. Technology is no exception
Historically, strategy is commonly associated with the military. The concept has evolved over the centuries and has been influenced by political, social, and economic factors. They all share the same core problem: where to deploy the addressable assets. In other words, what is worth doing in order to achieve the set goal?
This problem statement in itself is so simple. Still, creating a good strategy is far from trivial. It often involves making plans on how to use those assets, tracking the progress, and ensuring there are mechanisms in place that can deal with the unexpected. Due to the bulk of work justifying these decisions, many see strategy as a plan or a process resulting in a plan. There’s also the small matter of defining the goal. If that’s not part of the strategy, what is it then?
Making good decisions and implementing them is hard. Companies constantly struggle with the execution of game-changing ideas. Time after time, tech initiatives can be quite an adventure. While there just isn’t a one-size-fits-all solution to all of it, there are ways to improve the quality of decisions.
Let’s take a step back and consider three viewpoints on strategic decision-making with tech.
1. Be aware of what is going on and what is on the agenda of the top heads
Within any consistent organisation, there seems to be a handful of currently ongoing, repeating themes. The narratives can revolve around, e.g. growth, cost-cutting, transformation of some kind, or a topical issue like sustainability. These narratives reflect the current priorities that result from both internal and external factors. Some of them root themselves in strategy, others are a fad, and some are a result of interconnected random events.
To get a decision on something that is an exception to a routine, it is often smart to frame the decision against these buzzing themes. One might go as far as engaging only in activities that contribute to what is topical. It is obvious that since enterprises are complex, there is an evident risk of losing touch with reality. Sustainability? It's certainly important, but we should still patch our software. Cybersecurity? Hell yes! Just don’t sacrifice all the customers while at it. What about the customer focus, then? That can be overdone, too.
When it comes to the dialogue with leadership, the tech initiatives that get support benefit from surfing the trend wave. The fact is that organisations can handle only a few key ideas at a time. It is a consequence of a scale. The best way to act is often to direct the priorities of the tech organisation to support the current narrative. While it might feel like window dressing from time to time, it should be a way to support the strategy. If nothing else, it positions tech to be on the same page with the organisational agenda.
2. Without the data, you are just an individual with an opinion
A business case should state the expected benefits and costs of an investment over time. It should account for the rate of interest and clearly express the break-even time. And since the human brain burns a lot of energy on the visual cortex, it should come in a graphical format that is comparable and communicates the key points to an expert audience at a glance.
The bigger the project, the more likely it is to have an actual business case used to justify it. Business cases come in many shapes and sizes, and their level of discipline varies. While they might contain optimistic assumptions, they serve a very important function. They create a shared understanding and buy-in among decision-makers.
Modelling business cases is great since it makes the uncertainties visible. For example, no one can be certain of how the market perceives a completely new product. On the other hand, the cost to supply can be known. If we can limit the uncertainty to a limited number of components, the problem space becomes smaller. If the decision makers do believe in sales numbers that make the investment more profitable than the other available opportunities, it’s easy to make a decision and then act accordingly.
Making a proper business case that is MECE (Mutually Exclusive, Collectively Exhaustive) and describes the money-making mechanisms also allows us to eliminate options that are not desirable. For example, if the success of an endeavour requires sales more than the total addressable market, we have one less option to consider.
Creating a business case is both science and art. It can typically also contain qualitative factors and risk analysis. The point here is that if a tech can participate in a business case formulation or even present a plausible one, it’s a different game than just suggesting investments that come with vague variations of: “I think we should do this”.
3. Seeing is believing, and doing is understanding
Experience leaves a mark. I have a vivid memory of a very respected senior leader visiting the office. He is a very successful board professional and shared some of his insights with me and my colleagues. He told us that he recently took an introductory course on Machine Learning. The topic was even a bit fad back then, and it had a lot of visibility. The course was very hands-on, and he did engage in a lot of practical exercises around different Machine Learning tools.
After the course, it dawned on him. So far, he had just repeated phrases on Machine Learning that everyone else was repeating. He did not understand their meaning but just kept saying them like the people around him. After actually interacting with the data, he understood what the Machine Learning approach was good for and where it was not a valid way to solve problems. Through this first-hand experience, he saw through the hype and was able to take his recommendations and decisions to a completely new level. In technology, there is a huge difference between knowing and doing.
As stated in the business case section above, creating pretty presentations is important. “People do judge a book by its cover” is a fact of life, and you should not be short on that. After polishing the first impressions, there’s more than just the cover. In tech, it means that there is no shortcut around trying things.
Typical activities within a procurement process, like reference visits and reviewing documentation, are important, but they are no substitute for experimenting with the solution. Sometimes it is not feasible. Sometimes it is the only way to make a decent decision. It might mean things like actually deploying a piece of software in a live environment, seeing how it behaves when you try to extend it and then updating it. Give it a serious performance testing challenge with input that is dubious at best. Any actual business data will do fine. Just do it and see how your thinking changes. There is no need to be even statistically significant. It’s enough to get a first-hand experience on how it actually works.
Decision-making is a team effort
Building on the idea of just a handful of topics, these three things are our top takes on how to approach decision-making from the tech perspective. Many of the ideas presented here extend beyond the typical tech turf. They involve topics that are usually related to sales or finance. For a seasoned tech leader, this does not come as a surprise.
About the Authors
Juho Jutila is a Business Architect with over 20 years of experience in building competitive strategies and leveraging both emerging and proven technologies to help global organisations succeed. Before Vuono Group, he worked as a consultant at Accenture, Columbia Road and Futurice, to name a few.
Ilmari Koskinen navigates strategy, tech, design, and execution, excelling in coaching, shaping product strategies, and hands-on coding where business goals, user needs, and technical realities collide. He's a generalist who believes in connecting disciplines to achieve great outcomes, from aligning leadership to unblocking dev teams. He is currently working as Tech Principal at Futurice.
If you enjoyed this, check out the previous article in the series: Silver bullets dipped in snake oil: Why architecture work matters and what’s the catch.