Linear to Concurrent Decision Making

With the evolution of technology, the decision making process for businesses has moved from a linear decision making process to a concurrent decision making process.

If you think back to the late 90's, email was just coming mainstream. We still used a word processor to write letters to mail or fax. Many people did not have or want voicemail and receptionists and secretaries (now that is an antiquated word!) were the conduit of phone calls and most communication. We travelled to almost every meeting and almost every meeting was face to face.

10 years later, technology has changed the way we communicate as well as on how decisions are made. Linear decisions where information passed back and forth or up and down a chain of command has now been replaced with real time concurrent decision making. Decision makers and influencers can work together to achieve more by talking through their choices and coming to one or more conclusions and essentially moving the peanut forward, FASTER!

As I think back to some of the larger organizations I worked for, email can drive us back to linear decision making as we wait for others to read, digest and act on our correspondence. This can be good and bad. With Blackberries, I could often get a quick ruling back but when the answer or solution was more complicated, a conversation was the better way of coming to a conclusion.

Leveraging technology can accelerate decision making depending on the scenario: Internal vs. Customer Facing, single decision makers vs. a committee etc. All important considerations when choosing a medium to achieve a decision.