Effective Decision Velocity
In the life of every organization, there comes a point where the primary factor contributing to its success or growth is its effective decision-making velocity.
We look at our balance sheet and know that it needs work, but insufficient cashflow is ultimately just a symptom. One that can lead back to a small number of potential causes:
Poor alignment of the business model
Ineffective cashflow management
Poor effective decision-making velocity
And ultimately, solving your decision-making process may be one of the most effective ways to address issues one and two.
What I find is that in each growth cycle, there is a stunting phase where decisions become bottlenecked. And quite often that bottleneck comes from the inability to let decision ownership go.
I think we all understand that on some level.
Most of the people I know in startup development and ecosystem building were the classic group project leader. We learned early that group projects usually meant a project we did ourselves so that everyone else in the group could also get an “A.” We became the people who got tasked with the hard jobs when we worked inside other companies.
I find that interesting, because so many of us came to entrepreneurship because we were fed up with tackling the hard problems in places where other people got the credit or financial reward for it.
Somehow though, it's become common to recreate that structure, but WAY WORSE.
Now not only do you get to work on the hard project of entrepreneur support, but you also get to tackle sales and marketing, finance and accounting, fundraising, operations, reporting, team management, and the day-to-day emotional labor of keeping the whole thing moving.
In the early days, you run on the energy of mission-driven idealism. A community is formed and gets swept up in the ideals. Enough people roll up their sleeves to keep the community momentum going.
Very few of them however are really helping address the underlying financial model of the enterprise.
And one day, you wake up.
You realize you still need to make a living.
But you've built a culture where everyone comes to you for every decision, and your cognitive load is SO off the charts that all you can do is operate reactively, not strategically.
So if you’re still with me, the question has to be, “How do I fix my effective decision velocity?”
I was recently in Charleston at an event with Carolina Venture Studio where I met Nick Strehle. Nick shared that in his startup class at The Harbor Entrepreneur Center, he centers it around the concept of Decision Ownership Architecture.
Admittedly, I was only able to glean a cocktail party understanding of his approach, which I am eager to dive deeper into in our next meeting. But the phrase gave me a language to understand what I had been feeling in our own company. It led me to start digging into our organizational decision-making process.
Want to know what I realized?
I was guilty as charged. But it wasn’t for lack of intent, it was lack of communication, and follow through on my part.
I will put our team up against anyone. I really couldn’t be more fortunate. The thoughtfulness and care they bring to this work inspires me daily. But without a clear handoff of responsibilities, every day I risked burning out an all-star team.
So if you’re out there and struggling, just know that it really doesn’t take as much as you think to start fixing your decision-making culture. But it does require being honest about where decisions are getting stuck, who actually owns them, and what information they need to move forward without waiting for you.
And once you do, it frees up your mental and emotional capacity to engage better in building the strategic partnerships and operating model infrastructure that allow you to succeed in your mission AND make a good living doing so.
If you’d like additional support on this, please reach out. I’d like to spend the next few months helping a small group of emerging and growth-stage ESO leaders shortcut the mistakes and find the best operating version of themselves.
#BeTheNode
