{"id":153,"date":"2017-04-18T19:31:00","date_gmt":"2017-04-18T08:31:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/prestosketching.com\/?p=153"},"modified":"2025-11-17T07:28:09","modified_gmt":"2025-11-16T20:28:09","slug":"how-well-does-your-team-make-decisions-the-decision-tree-can-help","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/prestosketching.com\/blog\/2017\/04\/18\/how-well-does-your-team-make-decisions-the-decision-tree-can-help\/","title":{"rendered":"How well does your team make decisions? The Decision Tree can help"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">A good friend of mine once said that a team is running well when it\u2019s moving at the <em>speed of trust<\/em> (which is a classic <a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/SPEED-TRUST-Thing-Changes-Everything\/dp\/1416549005\/?tag=prestosketchi-20\">Stephen Covey<\/a> line). I\u2019ve always found that trust at work has so much to do with how a boss delegates work, and empowers team members to <strong>make decisions themselves<\/strong>. Liz Wiseman\u2019s book <em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Multipliers-Best-Leaders-Everyone-Smarter\/dp\/0061964395\/?tag=prestosketchi-20\">Multipliers: How the Best Leaders Make Everyone Smarter<\/a><\/em> is a huge help in this area.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Easy to say, but hard to do, right? If you\u2019re a manager, how <em>do<\/em> you free up your team to make decisions without you getting in the way? Or how <em>do<\/em> you try to change the behaviour of a micro-managing boss so that they will trust you more?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Draw a Decision Tree<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">One way I\u2019ve found that really helps is (surprise surprise) using drawing and visualisation. More specifically: drawing a Decision Tree*. The Decision Tree is from Susan Scott\u2019s book <a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Fierce-Conversations-Achieving-Success-Conversation\/dp\/0425193373\/?tag=prestosketchi-20\"><em>Fierce Conversations<\/em><\/a>, and looks a bit like this:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Go ahead and sketch a tree yourself**. Think of your project, your team, or your company as a tree that grows and bears fruit. For this tree to thrive, countless decisions are made every day, week, month and year. But there are different <em>levels<\/em> of decisions:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li><strong>Leaf decisions<\/strong> &#8211; Make the decision and act on it. You don\u2019t need to report the action you took. There\u2019s no real risk here.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Branch decisions<\/strong> &#8211; Make the decision, act on it, and then report the action you took (daily, weekly or monthly). There might be some risk, but it can be mitigated.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Trunk decisions<\/strong> &#8211; Make the decision, but report on the decision to check before you take action. There could potentially be high risk of harm to the project, team or company.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Root decisions<\/strong> &#8211; Make the decision with input from other people. There could be great risk of harm to the project, team or company if these decisions are poorly made and\/or implemented.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Example<\/strong>: if you yank a leaf off a tree, the tree isn\u2019t going to die. In the same way, a \u2018leaf decision\u2019 poorly made won\u2019t really impact the company. But if a wrong action is taken at the <em>root<\/em> level, it could really damage the tree.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">How to use the Decision Tree<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The Decision Tree has tons of uses:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>A way to figure out autonomy<\/strong> &#8211; To help you and your team think about and clarify what &#8216;autonomy&#8217; means in their context (this was HUGELY helpful for me in a previous job!), so that everyone knows exactly where they have authority to make decisions and take action.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>A way to chart professional development<\/strong> &#8211; To help articulate clear paths for professional development. The more senior an employee gets, the more their decision-making power moves from leaf to branch to trunk level.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>A way to free up senior management<\/strong> &#8211; To help senior management release control appropriately, and develop grassroots leadership within the organisation. This frees up senior management to focus on the more strategic decision-making, while providing more learning and development opportunity to employees at various levels.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>A way to help a team work better together<\/strong> &#8211; To help a team and\/or management articulate where team dynamics and leadership feel wrong (micro-management, anyone?), and where changes can be made in how decisions are made and acted on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>A way to coach junior managers<\/strong> &#8211; Junior managers are typically on a journey of relinquishing control and empowering people around them (I&#8217;ve been there). The Decision Tree is a great way to coach a junior manager on how to delegate more to others.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Here&#8217;s an example way to use the Decision Tree in your team<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Do you manage people? Are you a project manager, change manager, or product manager? Here\u2019s a step-by-step way you might want to try using the Decision Tree in your team:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Draw the Decision Tree on a whiteboard<\/strong>, and use the Root \/ Trunk \/ Branch \/ Leaf structure to explain the four different types of decisions to your team.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Get everyone to list the various decisions<\/strong> that need to be made in the team. My favourite way to do this is to capture them on <strong>sticky notes<\/strong>, one decision per note (you&#8217;ll see why in a second). Ask each team member to read out what they wrote, and ensure that everyone understands each one. Here are some examples:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Leave request approvals<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Quarterly ad-spend changes<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Commits and pull requests (for the developers amongst us!)<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Stationery orders<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Map the decisions on the Decision Tree<\/strong>. Everyone can then place their sticky notes on whichever level they think each decision belongs. You can always combine any duplicates as you go.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Discuss the map of decisions on the Tree<\/strong>. Are all the decisions placed where everyone expects? The interesting insightful parts of this discussion should be about any decisions where people <em>don&#8217;t<\/em> agree on the level at which they should be. <em>Why<\/em> do different people expect specific decisions to be at different levels? how can they come to a common understanding about the appropriate level? This can be particularly insightful for a team manager.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Finally, discuss what specific actions can be taken<\/strong>, to change the situation to be more favourable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">As always, I\u2019m keen to hear if and how you use this visual framework, or any other techniques included in this blog.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-small-font-size wp-block-paragraph\">* I should say that\u00a0<em>this<\/em>\u00a0Decision Tree visual framework is different to the <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Decision_tree\">boxes-and-arrows decision tree drawings<\/a> you might have seen before, which are still great for analysing decisions and outcomes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-small-font-size wp-block-paragraph\">** I probably went a bit overboard on mine (above); a simple bunch of lines is completely fine!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Here&#8217;s how to use a simple drawing of a tree to help you and your team nut out what sort of decisions everyone should be making, to help build trust and efficiency.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_uag_custom_page_level_css":"","_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[59,58,12],"tags":[61,78,77,68,76],"class_list":["post-153","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-for-meeting-leaders-and-coaches","category-for-project-managers-and-facilitators","category-visual-strategy-facilitation","tag-coaching","tag-decision-making","tag-strategy","tag-visual-framework","tag-visual-metaphor","entry"],"uagb_featured_image_src":{"full":false,"thumbnail":false,"medium":false,"medium_large":false,"large":false,"1536x1536":false,"2048x2048":false,"sidebar-featured":false,"genesis-singular-images":false},"uagb_author_info":{"display_name":"Ben Crothers","author_link":"https:\/\/prestosketching.com\/blog\/author\/prestosketching_uao6s0\/"},"uagb_comment_info":0,"uagb_excerpt":"Here's how to use a simple drawing of a tree to help you and your team nut out what sort of decisions everyone should be making, to help build trust and efficiency.","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/prestosketching.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/153","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/prestosketching.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/prestosketching.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/prestosketching.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/prestosketching.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=153"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/prestosketching.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/153\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":154,"href":"https:\/\/prestosketching.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/153\/revisions\/154"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/prestosketching.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=153"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/prestosketching.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=153"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/prestosketching.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=153"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}