Group decision-making:

• Autocratic: "I have full authority to make any choice"
  One person holds full authority to decide without needing input from others.

• Delegation: "You decide today (with defined boundaries)"
  Someone who holds the authority to make a decision, gives that authority to someone else.  Related page: Autonomy or Empowerment.

• Democratic: The majority vote wins
  This is typically when more than 50% of people vote/agree on the same proposal. Note however that depending on the type of decision, the threshold may be set to a value greater than 50%.

• Consensus: Discuss, debate and then align/commit
  This method is primarily about proactively addressing, and solving potential objections of other team members to accept a good enough solution.  Ideally the group are deciding that something is “safe to try” and as such can agree to proceed if not all agreeing on their preferred choice.  Research consistently shows that this decision making method is the foundation of high-performing teams.  Related pages: The decider Protocol, Impactful Meetings

• Avoidance / Postponement: Defer / delay making the decision
  Avoiding decisions can be detrimental when a decision is urgent. However, when used intentionally, deferring a decision can be more beneficial in the long-run. This method works well when there’s a lot of ambiguity or when delaying a decision won’t create a negative consequence.  Related page: Just In Time.

• Consultative: "I need your input"
  This method is about asking for other’s people feedback before making a decision.  Typically the person consulting others has full authority to make the call but needs to get input from others to make a more informed decision.  It's important to ensure that people don't confuse being consulted with having a vote (like in Democracy).

This, just like the origins of similar literature, is loosely based on Johnson, D., & Johnson, F. (2013). Joining Together: Group Theory and Group Skills, 11th ed. United States: Pearson

This is a situational leadership theory.  At the heart of this decision model is the fact that not all decisions are created equal. Some decisions are extremely important and will require input from many people, while other decisions can be made quickly as they won’t have long-lasting effects on the company as a whole. Understanding this basic concept is important, because you aren’t going to use the same decision making process for all choices that you have to make.

Developed in 1973 as a collaboration between Victor Vroom and Phillip Yetton (then later in 1988 with the help of Arthur Jago), his model aims to identify the best management style that can be applied in different situations, and subsequently the optimal decision-making approach to implement in these situations.

The Vroom-Yetton-Jago model defines different managers and how they make decisions. Basically, it says that the decisions we make are affected by three main factors that work together: Decision Quality, the Potential for Collaboration, and the amount of Time Available.

Decision Quality

How important it is to come up with the right decision?  You always want to make the right choice, but some circumstances are more important than others in the context of business as a whole.  A better question might be...

How important it is to make the best choice?  Considers the future consequences of the decision. The higher the quality of the decision, the more time and team members should be involved in the decision-making process.

Committing a large number of resources to each and every decision you make would be inefficient, as many decisions just are not important enough to warrant that kind of investment. Pick and choose your spots and only invest a large amount of time and energy into the decisions that are.

Collaboration

Is this a one-person decision that a manager can make without consulting the team? or does it require a collaboration and consultation from the people that may be affected by the decision?  Adding team members to the decision-making process increases the quality of the output as well as the time required to reach a decision.

Time

What is the time limit for making the decision?  If you are in no particular rush to make the decision, there will be plenty of time to include others, conduct research, and more.

In order to determine the influence each of these three factors will have on a decision, Vroom, Yetton, and Jago defined the following eight questions that takes you through a Decision Tree to reach at the 'Correct Style of Leadership'  for making this decision.

These questions must be asked in a specific sequence as outlined below:

1. Quality Requirement (QR): How important is the technical quality of the decision?

2. Commitment Requirement (CR): How important is subordinate commitment to the decision?

3. Leader’s Information (LI): Do you (the leader) have sufficient information to make a high quality decision on your own?

4. Problem Structure (ST): Is the problem well structured (e.g., defined, clear, organized, lend itself to solution, time limited, etc.)?

5. Commitment Probability (CP): If you were to make the decision by yourself, is it reasonably certain that your subordinates would be committed to the decision?

6. Goal Congruence (GC): Do subordinates share the organizational goals to be attained in solving the problem?

7. Subordinate conflict (CO): Is conflict among subordinates over preferred solutions likely?

8. Subordinate information (SI): Do subordinates have sufficient information to make a high quality decision?

Note Question 8 is often left out of other literature on this concept.

Vroom, V. H., & Jago, A. G. (1988). The new leadership: Managing participation in organizations. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.

There are three general leadership styles included in this model.

Autocratic

When you make a decision in an autocratic style, you simply make the decision and then tell others what you have decided. That’s it. There are no long meetings to deal with, no back and forth conversations with team members, etc. You simply use the information available – either information you already have, or information you acquire – and make the choice you feel best. In the model, these are defined as:

• Autocratic Type 1 – Leader solves the problem alone using information that is readily available to him/her.

• Autocratic Type 2 – Leader obtains additional information from group members, then makes decision alone. Group members may or may not be informed.

Consultative

This type of leadership is something of a ‘softer’ style of autocratic decision making. Ultimately, you still make the decision on your own – but you will first consult with others to gather opinions and input. The decision remains completely your responsibility, but you are going to work through the process to gather information from your team and other related parties before making your final choice. In the model, these are defined as:

• Consultative Type 1 – Leader shares problem with group members individually, and asks for information and evaluation. Group members do not meet collectively, and leader makes decision alone.

• Consultative Type 2 – Leader shares problem with group members collectively, but makes decision alone.

Collaborative

As the name would indicate, this is a type of decision making where you are going to work together with your team to make a choice. The decision is no longer yours alone at this point – rather, it is a collaborative effort among those who have been selected to work on the decision. Naturally this is going to be a more time-consuming operation when you make a decision this way, but it can lead to well thought out choices in the end.

In the model, this is defined as:

1. Leader meets with group to discuss situation.

2. Leader focuses and directs discussion, but does not impose will.

3. Group makes final decision.

Pugh analysis helps determine which alternative is more appropriate than the others based on predefined criteria. One advantage of this method is that it does not require a great amount of quantitative data. Furthermore, subjective opinions about one alternative versus another can be made more objective.

The Pugh matrix is a form of prioritisation matrix in which the candidate alternatives are compared against a reference or standard. This reference or standard can be either the current solution that already exists, a goal or a benchmark to be reached in the future. An example of when to use Pugh analysis is to compare multiple design concepts versus a baseline design using customer requirements (and other business requirements or constraints) as the criteria for comparison.

When to use it

The Pugh matrix is often used by engineers when making design decisions to evaluate multiple design concepts during the product development cycle. It can be used in a number of other applications, such as deciding which investment to take, which vendor to select, and which improvement project to initiate. It can also be used when improving or redesigning processes to select the solution that will achieve the best improvement in performance.

Where to start

Developing a list of evaluation criteria is the first step before evaluating the candidate alternatives. Each criteria can optionally be given a weighted value to indicate its importance as perceived by the team and other stakeholders. The more important the criteria, the higher the weight it can be. The evaluation criteria and their weights can be set by the team members working to select the best alternative, or by a group of experts in a dedicated session.  This step can be revisited.  In fact, it's often the case that once an alternative has been selected as the highest scoring, instinct suggests that this really shouldn't be the case and the criteria is updated with missing attributes.  This shouldn't be seen as 'fudging' the result, but simply that this method is helping to better identify the criteria and refine the requirements.

What next?

After developing the evaluation criteria, the team works through the matrix and determines how each alternative is compared with the baseline solution using pluses and minuses. The final scores can be obtained by adding up the weighted scores for each alternative. The most appropriate alternative is based on the scores. Typically, the best alternative is the one with the most pluses and the fewest minuses.

Don't stop there

Further solutions can be developed by combining the positive aspects of a number of options.

Or, as mentioned, you may decide to iterate on the process to refine the criteria.  Or, in deed, this activity may help you identify areas of vital knowledge that is missing.  So you may decide to plan a set of Spike's, PoCs (proof of concept) or Investigations.

Constructing and Using the Pugh Matrix

Pugh analysis is best done as a team. It is important however to include people with enough knowledge of the situation to avoid missing critical criteria or details of the alternatives. The following steps describe how to construct and use the Pugh matrix.

1. With your team, clearly explain the purpose for constructing the Pugh matrix.

2. Prepare the list of candidate alternatives and identify the relevant evaluation criteria.

3. Draw a table, then place the evaluation criteria in the left-hand column and the candidate alternatives in the top row.

4. Select a baseline solution or benchmark to be used as the standard for comparison.

5. Ask the team to indicate how the baseline solution is compared with each of the alternatives by placing a plus, minus, or zero.

6. Notice the highest score solution, the one with the most pluses and the fewest minuses.

7. Look for opportunities to combine the best aspects of different solutions.

8. You may find that you need to iterate over this process, to both refine the evaluation criteria and/or propose new solution ideas as they arise from this process.

9. You may have identified vital missing knowledge that is required before a decision can be made.