What Are We Missing While Achieving Modern Management Approaches?

I think each of you has faced problems with the effectiveness of business decisions, the competency of using the company resources, and employee hours. Almost every one of us has repeatedly faced dissatisfaction with a large number of meetings, the rapid switching to different contexts, and the failure to achieve the expected performance.

Every day, the global agenda in the field of management trends is increasingly reducing to the fact that collective decisions should be super–healthy and right. We create a more favorable atmosphere in the team, establish communication and motivate employees by involving them in solving issues. But is the story about discussions and social dancing in front of each other really justified in all cases?

Which manager has not been in a situation where opinions on the task differ within the team, and as a result contradict his own decision? In the search for a compromise, we essentially go into smearing responsibility. No one is to blame, or everyone is to blame.

In my understanding, the person responsible for the project or product in such situations should have sufficient authority to make the very decision that probably won’t be agreed upon by everyone. Especially when it does not play a critical role, it can be quickly corrected, or you can try several options at once.

But there remains a whole list of open questions. How to make everyone agree if it is, by definition, impossible? How to meet business needs and please teams? How not to offend anyone and take into account all existing opinions?

I have no answers to these questions. But I want to tell you about one case that surprised me a lot and highlighted the ambiguity and disadvantages of the collective solution approach.

you or You?

In one large company, which I will not name, due to the peculiarities of the language, there was a question — to address users respectfully or super-respectfully, conditionally, to write you or You with a capital letter. Closing eyes on the fact that the decision was already made by the professional community of linguists.

Serious managers of different levels participated in this discussion and tried to make a decision: how much they should bow to the user. But opinions have always been evenly divided into 2 camps. In general, they spent 1.5 months making a decision, meeting for one-hour meetings every week for several times, and attracting even more specialists from other departments.

From these parameters it is possible to deduce the financial value of this solution:

• If 7 people participated in an hour-long discussion 3 times a week for 5 weeks, you get 105 hours.
• That is, it is about 2.6 average salaries of high-level specialists. That is, depending on the market, you will get an amount starting from 10 thousand dollars.

For a decision that will not offend anyone. For a decision already made by the writers’ community and the rules of the game in this country. A non-critical solution that will not change the user experience and revenue.

And how many such issues do companies solve throughout the year? And why doesn’t anyone stop and ask the question: Is it worth it?

It seems that the desire to play the game to please everyone or the majority can drain budgets and reduce the efficiency of employees. After all, it is unlikely that all the people involved in the conversation will be delighted with many hours of discussions on a topic with an unobvious value.

I am sincerely convinced that it is possible to maintain a balance between making a collective decision and spending effectively the company’s resources — if you simply add a common sense.

Most often, there is no collective responsibility as such, there is a hierarchy. A specific person receives feedback for a particular product, and not the entire team at once. Therefore, it is logical that this particular person, the product manager, can make a final or intermediate decision that currently meets the needs of the business.

This does not mean that he/she alone makes every decision or goes into micromanagement. This means that in the case of super-controversial situations, they have the right to make a decision in accordance with the company’s values and experience.

The formula for making a decision is simple — simply ask yourself “Is it worth it?”