The Seven Questions of Decison-Making

It sometimes seems like planning and decision-making is alchemy or magic and best left in the hands of consultants. However, leaders of successful tire dealerships realize that planning and decision-making are the lifeblood for their companies' collective destinies.

What if there was a template to apply to planning and decision-making that helps remove some of the sting? If that method was tested and could easily be used by people at all levels of your business, would it be valuable?

The U.S. Army uses an approach called the military decision-making process (MDMP). It is exceedingly thorough, but ponderous and cumbersome. The guide manual to MDMP is over 200 pages long!

When I served in the Afghanistan war, one of our flanking brigades decided to use a strict application of MDMP for every mission. The process was so involved that they missed all timelines — not by hours, but by days and weeks. Their planning was perfect, but their goals were completely compromised.

The simplest solution is usually the best and it’s based on the following seven questions, which were originally developed by the British Army. (We’re now adapting it for the business world.)

When applied — using the scope, time and resources/information available — you will gain a 360-degree view of the situation (any situation) and how to confront it.

Here are the questions, which as you can see, generate a few additional questions:

1. What is the market or competition doing and why? Who is winning and who is not? What trends are you seeing and are those trends likely to continue? How does your business fit within this picture currently? The “why” is critical. What is driving your competition’s thinking and are their conclusions valid? You need to get inside your competitors’ heads before you can figure out how to defeat them.
2. What have I been told to do and why? If you’re the owner of your company, you might think, “Well, no one really tells me what to do.” Even CEOs answer to boards. Survival is a stern taskmaster in business and can dictate actions. Your employees and stakeholders must remain on board with what you’re doing or they will leave. Your customers get a vote, too. No matter your role, someone or something has an impact on your decisions. Your motivation must be logical and rational or no one will support the plan that emerges.
3. What effects do I want to have on my market or competition and what directions must I give to develop a plan? This is the spot where goals may show up. What would success look like? With this picture of success in mind, who needs to take what actions to make the vision come true? How do you see the competition chasing your business, rather than the other way around?
4. Where can I best accomplish each action/effect? This helps narrow the scope of your vision. Where will the easiest or most profitable wins come? Geographically, where do your ideas stand the best chance of success? What group, division or areas are impacted the most and will drive success? Who is in the forefront and who supports?
5. What resources do I need to accomplish each action/effect? Who are the instrumental people for this plan? How much time do you have and how much time can your team spare? What logistics are necessary? What are the costs, in dollars and sweat? For example, can your existing facilities handle the plan or will this require new rooftops?
6. When and where does each action take place in relation to each other? These are what I call “time hacks.” What can happen now? What actions can happen concurrently? What actions need to happen first before the plan can move forward? These clutch points are bottlenecks and stop forward progress until they’re solved. What actions are most important? Can the actions occur in multiple geographic locations and when?
7. What control measures, standards and metrics do I need to impose? How will you measure progress? How often will you take a sounding of your progress? What information and data are accepted across your team as key measurements? Who will contribute to the progress reviews and who is responsible for supplying information and data? Who owns the review process? What is the cadence for long-term follow-up? This is key. Too often, beautiful business plans are crafted, bronzed and forgotten when the tyranny of the “now” overcomes the organization. If commitment to your plan is uneven, your team might duck and let the plan blow over and watch it wither from general apathy.

Answering the above seven questions could result in a 250-page business plan or a one-page action plan. If you and your team are investigating a major acquisition and time is available, the document might be long and in-depth. If you’re participating in something less important, your plan will be less involved. But answering the questions gives a complete view of the situation and your plan forward.

Applying the seven questions rests on a few premises:

• Teddy Roosevelt’s adage, “Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.”
• The answer is within you.
• An honest SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats) analysis before you apply the questions to your business.

Planning and decision-making are always imperfect. There is never enough time, the information available to you may be incomplete and resources — including people and money — can be inadequate. If you wait for all these factors to align just right, the opportunity is often lost, with the future already riding in the rearview mirror.

The U.S. military frequently states that “the plan never survives first contact intact.” Planning and decision-making require flexibility to adapt to a changing situation or environment.

Your plan is only the cost of admission to the future, but the planning — driven by changes and updates — is the future. Using Roosevelt’s idea, we act and adjust as time, information and resources become available.

The answer is within you simply means that a solution is either in your team’s collective mind already and just needs brought out, or the solution is discoverable with soul-searching, collaboration and information. Hiring some outside organization isn’t necessarily required for planning and decision-making solutions. Who knows the organization better than the people invested in it?

The SWOT analysis is critical because it forms the foundation upon which the seven questions begin. Strengths and weaknesses are inward-looking — who we are. Opportunities and threats are outward-looking — what the world/market looks like.

The SWOT must be brutally honest because it provides much of the information that will fuel the answers to the seven questions. The choice is “garbage in, garbage out” or “gold in, gold out.” Where reality meets the future, confidence is key.

Planning is not the exclusive domain of consulting groups. The answers to the seven questions likely reside within the leaders of your business or its stakeholders. I won’t pretend that planning and decision-making are not complex topics. I am, however, asking you to view the topics through a simplified lens as a jumping-off point.

You don’t always start with traditional goals, necessarily. You can groom the background, the playing field and what must be true for the future. Then the seven questions walk you to your goals. In this, the seven questions are unique in planning and decision-making. They allow you to establish plans that fit the situation and not a situation shoe-horned to fit a plan.

Applying the seven questions should be a permanent part of your dealership’s culture and the results should be non-negotiable. Paint your plan on walls. Tattoo it on everyone’s arm. It isn’t going away and it can’t go away. The future of your dealership depends on it. Once your plan has been accomplished, celebrate, praise the players and reward a job well done. Then begin the entire process again.

The seven questions work in all decision-making situations, whether you’re the president of the United States or chairperson of the local county fair. The questions remain the same. Only the scope and detail vary. Planning can be laborious and potentially gut-wrenching. The seven questions make the process more natural and simpler.