Workshop · Leadership
Decision-making under pressure
How to decide when information is short, urgency is long, and waiting has a price too.
- Duration
- 2 hours 30 min
- Delivery
- On site · Virtual
- Participants
- From 8 to 24 participants
- Investment
- Request a quote
Investment depends on scope, number of participants and delivery mode. We prepare a proposal at no obligation.
The problem it solves
In a small company most important decisions are made in a hurry, on incomplete data, and without a record. Not because anyone thinks that is good business, but because the day offers nothing else.
The problem shows up later, in disguise. Because nobody wrote down what was decided or on what assumptions, there is no way to tell whether the decision was bad or whether it was good and turned out badly. Without that distinction there is no learning: the organisation repeats the same mistake believing it had bad luck.
What it covers
The workshop starts by sorting decisions by type, because each type asks for a different method. A cheap, reversible decision does not deserve the same process as an expensive, irreversible one, and treating them alike produces two symmetrical pathologies: paralysis on the small things and haste on the large ones.
Next comes the cost of waiting, the variable that almost never reaches the table. Postponing is deciding, and it has a price; the central exercise is putting a number on that price before postponing.
The last part installs the record: a short format capturing what was decided, on what information, what was expected to happen, and when it will be reviewed. That is what turns a decision into something the organisation can learn from.
What participants learn
- Classify a decision by reversibility and cost before choosing how to take it.
- Price the cost of waiting and treat postponement as the decision it is.
- Tell a bad decision from a bad outcome.
- Record decisions in a form that allows review and learning.
- Fix in advance when and on what evidence a decision will be revisited.
Agenda
- Decision types: cheap and reversible versus expensive and irreversible
- The cost of waiting: postponing has a price
- Sufficient information versus complete information
- Biases that appear specifically under pressure
- Decision versus outcome: why confusing them blocks learning
- The one-page decision record and its review
- Deciding as a group without diluting accountability
- What an organisation that learns from decisions looks like
What the organisation leaves with
- A classification rule for decisions, usable immediately.
- A one-page decision record format.
- A review carried out on three real decisions from the business.
- An explicit rule on what is decided alone and what is decided together.
Programme details
- Format
- Workshop
- Also available as
- Executive talk · Intensive workshop
- Languages
- Español · English
- Includes
- Participant workbook
- Action plan
- Post-training resources
- Facilitation
- ALUD Consulting LLC — Global Business Transformation.
Who it is for
- Managers and directors with authority to decide.
- Owners who decide alone and want a method they can hand over.
- Leadership teams that decide together and never record how.
- Supervisors making operational calls with financial consequences.
Frequently asked questions
- Do we work on our own cases or on textbook ones?
- Your own. Each participant brings two or three real decisions, recent or pending, and the material is applied to them. A borrowed case resolves neatly and teaches nothing transferable.
- Does it help if our problem is deciding too slowly?
- Yes. Slowness and haste are the same error: applying one decision type's method to the other. The opening classification corrects both.
- Is there preparation beforehand?
- Only bringing the decisions. If the organisation already keeps a record, it helps; if it keeps none, the workshop is where one starts.
Related articles
The decisions you make without noticing you are making them
Not deciding is also a decision, and it usually costs more. Four decisions most businesses make by omission, and what each one costs.
Read more →Having information is not the same as being able to decide
Most businesses don't suffer from a lack of data. They suffer because the data they have doesn't arrive in time, together, or in a form that allows a choice.
Read more →Request this programme
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Working this inside the organisation
If this challenge will not be settled in one session, ALUD Consulting LLC works it as consulting: management consulting, human resources, strategy, organisational design, leadership development and business transformation.