Accelerating Decision Making Without Breaking the Business

MIT CISR research has shown that companies are able to make better and faster decisions by devolving decision making to teams that are closer to customers or end users. These teams are not just held accountable by managers; they have the authority to decide for themselves WHAT they will accomplish and HOW to get things done. Company leaders, in turn, need to guide these decisions by setting four decision rights guardrails that serve as enabling constraints that align teams with enterprise-wide interests. The guardrails revolve around a company’s purpose, data, corporate policies, and resource allocation processes.

In this research project, we will more closely examine these guardrails, with an emphasis on best practices that effectively and efficiently accelerate decision making and action in companies. We will survey executives and conduct case studies to answer the following research questions:

(*) What are successful practices and key mechanisms for each of the decision rights guardrails?
(*) What are the integration and standardization requirements for each guardrail? How should the decision rights for these practices and mechanisms be distributed among key organizational stakeholders (e.g., teams, units/lines of business, centers of excellence, leadership)?
()* How do the four guardrails compare in terms of their contributions to key organizational performance indicators (e.g., organizational agility, time to market, cost of operations)?

Seeking: Survey respondents, and interviews with digital leaders, enterprise architects, IT governance officers, data experts, product/solutions owners, and other practitioners that are working to effectively and efficiently accelerate decision making and action in their companies