Decision Quality

3Getting to Decision Quality

The role of any leader is first and foremost assembling the right team…. Number two is making sure decisions are being made.

—Jack Dorsey, founder of Twitter and Square¹

The core of leadership is assembling the right people to make quality decisions. The previous chapter defined a quality decision as one that scores 100% in each of the six requirements of decision quality (DQ), where 100% is the point at which further improvement is not worth the additional effort or delay. The big question is: What must be done to achieve DQ? Before addressing that question, it's helpful to step back and consider where decisions—or the need to make them—come from.

Declaring the Need for a Decision

The journey to get to DQ begins when someone declares that a decision must be made. Situations that require decisions occur throughout the day. Most are mundane and undemanding. For example, one of three co-workers might look at her watch and say, “It's almost noon. We should go out for lunch or have something delivered.” Or a driver comes to the proverbial fork in the road, where a decision must be made to take either the left route or the right. Other situations have greater consequences and demand more time and deeper reflection. Nevertheless, the act of declaring the need for a decision triggers all that follows, as when a CEO declares, “With so many new competitors entering the market, we must change our customer targeting and pricing. I want our marketing VP to ...