In many meetings there will be decisions that will need to be made. Sometimes these decisions are informal and can be decided by anyone. Other times though, the process is more formal and you need to get a decision from someone with the proper level of authority. In this post we'll discuss how to handle this situation.
Depending upon the type of meeting, you might have the proper decision maker in attendance who can make the call. For example, if the session is a change control meeting, often the people in attendance will have the authority to make decisions. But if the session is a weekly project sync and there are some substantial decisions to be made, the person or people in authority may not normally be in attendance.
Ideally when you were crafting your meeting agenda, you might have discovered this issue and proactively invited the one or more decision makers needed to the meeting. Also in this ideal scenario, the decision makers would attend your meeting and everything would go smoothly from start to finish.
But often the folks with this authority are busy and may or may not attend your meeting. How do you handle this situation? If it's simply that the decision maker is busy or double, sometimes even triple booked, see if you can negotiate a compromise. Most of the time, decisions can be discussed and decided upon in mere minutes. Schedule a hard start and stop time in your agenda for this decision and see if you can convince your decision maker to just show up to this small time slot.
Sometimes though this won't work. The decision maker might be out of the office, on vacation, in a different time zone that doesn't align very well, etc. In this scenario, it might be helpful to preload the decision prior to the meeting. Have a conversation with the decision maker, explain what needs to be decided and try to get a decision even if it isn't in person but instead via email or online chat.
For more complicated decisions, a discussion with the meeting attendees might be needed before a decision can be made. In this scenario you'll want to hold the discussion, ensure diligent notes are taken and maybe even define some possible solutions with pros and cons for each. After the meeting you can take this output to the decision maker and finalize the decision.
But what do you do if you have a decision maker in attendance who has the authority for a decision, but is unable to come to a conclusion? For this, you might need to probe the decision and find out more. Maybe they don't have enough information to make an informed decision. Or maybe the decision is just barely out of their authority. For these types of issues, you'll want to do what you can to reduce the impediments, bring additional information or resources to the decisions and generally try to be supportive in helping the decision be made.
But in some situations the decision maker doesn't want to make a decision as they might be blamed if the incorrect decision is made. How you address this will be entirely up to your organizational culture. In some cultures, failing with the wrong decision is a non-issue so long as the decision is well informed and there's data and evidence to support the decision. Maybe the decision maker is new to the organization and doesn't fully understand this part of the culture and you can help them. In other scenarios maybe the decision can be shared with others within authority to double or triple check the decision.
Regardless of how you go about managing your decision makers, it's important to look down the road ahead of you to determine if there are decisions to be made and who can make them. In doing so, you can proactively manage decisions and the decision makers who make them, to help your meetings run smoothly and with the highest level of effectiveness.