Where do you sit in the decision-making hierarchy on your project? Are you a senior leader that is not senior enough to make key decisions, nor experienced enough - or perhaps lucky enough - to delegate tasks to other team members in order to think straight?

Admittedly, as an industry, we have a poor reputation for establishing transparency in project decision-making. This unfortunately leads to repeat mistakes and teams without the resilience and brain-power to collectively figure things out.  

 This issue is bigger than any single project, and it’s holding us back in terms of delivering exceptional built environments.  

If you stop and think about it, a successful project outcome is the cumulative result of hundreds and thousands of decisions made along the way. If you can master the art of shaping and guiding these decisions, whilst being acutely aware of their greater impact, then you’re more than halfway there!

Shaping decisions happens at multiple levels from the ground up at every stage of your project. 

This is where I believe the idea of leadership teams comes into play . . . 

As soon as multiple people need to make decisions, communication must come to the fore. Key to this is defining roles and responsibilities, levels of accountability and managing expectations for what this means for individuals and how the project is set up.

These conversations are challenging. 

Especially when managing upwards or outwards beyond your team.

But if we don’t encourage leaders to want a strong leadership team to support them, then we are at risk of losing a seriously talented middle ground of senior leaders who are exhausted and fed up with doing so much of the work with very little acknowledgment or reward.

Our future leaders and decision-makers.

I know this isn’t exclusively a built environment industry issue, but nevertheless, it is worth tackling from within.

I’m an advocate for never shying away from talking about the reality of obstacles that the project - or in this case our industry - needs to face.

The concept of collectively figuring things out helps to build trust, remove hesitancy in high-pressure situations and importantly, reduces doubt in your team’s capabilities to deal with new challenges as they arise. Which in turn improves the speed and quality of decision-making.

A few key tips to spearhead decision-making:

• set up a dedicated governance group, with multiple levels of experience & a clear mandate
• establish a transparent means to score qualitative information alongside quantitative to help validate decision-making, especially where there are competing agendas such as financials and sustainability
• develop principles to support a project vision & adequately bring them to life so that decision-makers know what they are saying yes or no to.
• engage with your project opponents to strengthen your messaging and recognise where the fault lines might be as early as possible

And finally, adjust the pace at which you expect others to follow your lead. 

Even if you have absolute clarity on your project vision and key decisions necessary to get there, don’t assume that others do too. Whilst your clarity enables you to fast-track decisions, make sure you pause to ensure that you are bringing others with you.

This is the only way to truly lead a successful project.

I am keen to spark conversations for leaders within the built environment. I have written a book that is intended as a pragmatic blueprint to support courageous leaders in pursuit of high-quality project outcomes.

Our industry has some amazing opportunities and challenges ahead, that can use collective wisdom. You can book a call or check out my new book, plus learn more about our resources and services available for every budget with the tabs above and below. 

Enabling your success!