Dawna Jones

In a business environment of complexity and uncertainty, excellent decision-making skills are paramount. Employees, customers, and others touched by a company's actions respond to what they trust — ethical decision-making in business has become a strategic asset. Learn how to communicate decisions effectively, how to make faster and more informed decisions on the fly, and how to incorporate your core values into your decision-making.

If you look back on the best and worst decisions you’ve ever made, you’ll probably discover that you don’t make the best decisions in stressful circumstances. But stressful conditions happen all the time, you say. There’s a difference between a stressful event that must be addressed or resolved (equipment breakdown on your production line is jeopardizing your being able to complete or ship a big order to an important customer, for example) and the stress caused by being in a work environment — often characterized by unreasonable workloads, unsupportive managers, excessively long work days, and so on — that puts employees on high alert 24/7 with no end in sight.

A company is a community of people, each having unlimited potential, who agree to work with others. The quality of the interactions and relationships within the workplace dictates what gets done and how well. So when the workplace isn’t healthy, neither is the company. An unhealthy company is not an environment conducive to sound decision-making.

When faced with a business problem — something is not going or performing the way you expect — you go into problem-solving mode, in which you try to uncover the cause of the problem and then remedy it. You can take one of two approaches when working with problems: You can seek out the root of the problem — the thing that is impeding the desired outcome — and fix it.

Core values reflect what is important to your company. They serve as the unshakeable foundation for what your company stands for in good and bad times. When integrated into decision-making, core values are part of decision-makers' mindsets at every level in the company. Consider core values the nonnegotiable part of your company's reputation, sustained by the commitment of executives and employees at every level to live those values in their decision-making and in their relationships with company personnel, customers, suppliers, and communities.

Can you make decisions swiftly and confidently when vast amounts of data cross your desk and inbox every day? How do you prioritize and rapidly respond in the midst of changing conditions? Well, you use the skills you already possess but may not be tapping into.Here's an interesting correlation: The way you process information as you drive a vehicle works for making an informed decision, as well.

When you're communicating a decision, you need to know that you have successfully communicated the basic message. You also want everyone on the team to share an understanding of what the target results are so that, in the event that something unexpected happens, everyone knows what to do. The worst time to find out that you and your team are not on the same page is after you've communicated a decision and tasked your team with implementing that decision.

Your relationship with your ego is an essential part of your decision-making expertise. Everyone has an ego — composed of your self-esteem, self-worth, and personal sense of security — and it's the ego's job is to look after your safety and security in the big world. When your fundamental emotional need to feel safe isn't met, you'll fill in the gaps, sometimes in ways that undermine your ability to make sound decisions.

Management styles are undergoing a total overhaul as the "tell, sell, and make-it-so" approach gives way to co-creating solutions horizontally across and vertically up levels of authority. The impetus for this change is high levels of employee disengagement. This crisis of disengagement is the opening you need to convert your workplace into a better climate for decision-making and creative innovation.