Decide and Deliver: Five Steps to Breakthrough Performance in Your Organization

The Hallmark of great companies is their ability to consistently make and execute good decisions. Companies that succeed in developing their ability to “decide and deliver” not only turn in better financial results, but also cultivate more engaged and motivated employees. In short, they make decision effectiveness a source of lasting competitive advantage.
In ‘Decide and Deliver’, the authors draw on Bain & Company’s extensive research and detailed case studies from companies as varied as Ford Motor Company, British American Tobacco, Telstra, Lafarge, and ABB UK. They deduced that decision-driven organizations significantly outperform their competitors. Their decisions are better and are translated more effectively into action. Their decision cycles are shorter than those of competitors, and their decision-and-execution processes tailor the effort expended to the importance of the decision. Their financial results, typically, are head and shoulders above their peers.
‘Decide and Deliver’ presents a basic five-step process for improving an organization’s decision effectiveness:
1. Assess your decision effectiveness and how your organization affects it.
2. Identify your critical decisions.
3. Set individual critical decisions up for success.
4. Ensure that your company enables and reinforces great decision making and execution.
5. Embed the changes in everyday practice.
‘Decide and Deliver’ is the road map. It is the only book that shows how to build an integrated decision-driven organization. It illustrates how to eliminate the dithering, open up the bottlenecks that get in the way of good decisions, and help everyone in the organization learn to make and execute good decisions quickly. It shows leaders how to avoid the obstacles that prevent good decisions and undermine performance; from lack of cohesion in the leadership team itself to the proliferation of unnecessary meetings and committees. And the result? A more profitable company.
Mr. Jean-Marie Pean, chairman of Bain & Co., Middle East, delivered a detailed training module based on ‘Decide and Deliver’ in Madinah Institute for Leadership & Entrepreneurship’s executive education program; PALM2 (Program for Advanced Leadership & Management).