Designing a Garden, Decision Making Rights, and Intentional Collaboration (6-4-25)

Last week was about bags of rock and not assuming you’re a burden. This week is about decision making rights and intentional collaboration.

Technically, it is my wife’s garden. However, she did invite us all to collaborate in certain ways. She was very clear that she alone was going to decide how to design the space, which included creating the paths, setting up the rock, and deciding which structures go where. Outside of the creating the space, she invited us in to help populate the space. We had the opportunity to choose flowers, vegetables, colors, and other potential decorations. My contribution is this cool cat statue that hangs out in the corner 😉

Let’s connect this to decision making rights and intentional collaboration. Sometimes, when people think of collaboration, they assume this means that everyone has an equal part throughout every step of the decision-making process. Have you ever experienced this on a project? I have, A LOT. I’d argue that our culture of consensus leads to this as well. Approaching problems in a manner where there has to be 100% consensus is incredibly inefficient and slow. The fact is that not everyone has equal decision rights in any given situation. The fact is that everyone’s viewpoint and feedback should not be equal in every situation.

Notice what my wife did in our story this week. She was crystal clear that she was the decision maker on the garden design. This clarity let the kids and I know not to spend any time there. My wife was also very clear on where she wanted our input. As a result, we could focus our time and efforts in that area. While my kids and I may not have weighed in on every decision, we were still able to contribute in meaningful ways. We are still proud of our contributions.

The challenge: Will you take the time to outline who has the true decision making rights? Will you take the time to outline roles and responsibilities when you begin collaborating?

Have a jolly good day,

Andrew Embry

Patio Furniture and Clarifying Roles in Decision Making (5-29-24)

Last week was about not overcomplicating solutions. This week we will explore patio furniture and clarifying roles in decision making.

I mentioned in our last entry that we had a family conversation about the patio furniture. During this conversation, my wife and I asked our kids what they wanted. They were excited to have input. At the

same time, we were very clear with them about their role in this decision. We explained that we would listen to everything they said, and at the end of the day, my wife and I were the final decision makers. I further stated that my wife’s preferences outweigh everyone else on this. My kids understood and appreciated the transparency. They still felt involved in the decision even if they didn’t have the final say so.

What does this have to do with anything? Is it just me, or does it feel too often that we try to make decisions by committee? While I understand the desire to include individuals, doing things by consensus and committee is incredibly slow and ineffective in a world that moves faster and faster. Additionally, making decisions in this way is incredibly confusing for everyone involved. If everyone believes that they have an equal say and equal decision-making power, then it’s easy for everyone to believe that all of their suggestions/feedback must be acted on.

While I don’t believe we should make decisions by committee, I do believe there is a sweet spot. That sweet spot requires you to identify who ultimately will be held accountable for the decision and who has the decision-making authority. It also includes being transparent with everyone that while you will hear all of their opinions it doesn’t necessarily mean that you will be able to act on all of them. If you combine this with being clear about the decision making criteria (lesson from a couple of weeks ago 😉) then you have a decision making process that is inclusive AND fast.

The challenge- Are you clarifying who has decision making rights and how the decision will be made?

Have a jolly good day,

Andrew Embry

Patio Furniture, Making Decisions, and Establishing Requirements (5-15-24)

Last week was about patio furniture and designing spaces to drive behaviors. This week is about patio furniture, making decisions, and establishing requirements.

Before purchasing the new patio furniture, my wife, kids, and I had a few conversations about what we wanted out of the furniture. We had talked about A LOT of different things. It began to feel a little overwhelming. Then, I sat down with my wife and we whiteboarded requirements. I’m dead serious. Few things are better than whiteboarding with a loved one 😉 We listed what were requirements vs nice to haves. The initial list of requirements was too long, so we ended up narrowing it down to 3-4 things that we absolutely needed to have. This level of clarity made the buying decision less overwhelming and so much easier. Now, we could look at all the options and say, “Out of all of them only X number meet our 3-4 requirements. If those meet our requirements there is no longer a wrong choice. Let’s just pick one and go.”

What does this have to do with anything? It’s easy for major projects or big decisions to feel daunting. It’s easy to become paralyzed by all the pressure that comes with these. I believe that most of the time when big projects or decisions are daunting, it’s because we are not clear enough on what success looks like. If we can clearly articulate the 3-4 things that would make us choose one option over another or if we can outline the 3-4 things that will make a project successful, then it’s so much easier to deliver.

The challenge- Have you identified the success requirements?

Bonus real world application– The other day I was talking to someone about skill development. They listed off about 10-15 topics that they could focus on. It was A LOT. They asked me which ones I thought we should invest in. Instead, I asked, “What is are the 2-3 things that these people need to be able to do.” They responded, “They need to be able to do X, Y, and Z.” My next question was, “Can they already do X, Y, and Z?” The person replied, “They can already more or less do Y and Z. X is the biggest gap.” This gave us clarity on our requirements. We didn’t need to tackle everything. We needed to create interventions that would drive the knowledge and enhance the skills, so people could do X. All of a sudden an overwhelming list of 10-15 things, turned into a much more manageable 3-4 things to do.

Have a jolly good day,

Andrew Embry

Market Research, Velvet Ropes, and Decision Criteria (2-7-18)

Last week was about market research and mitigating risk. This week we will think about market research as it relates to decision criteria, security guards, and setting up a velvet rope. Somewhere in our life we have all probably ran into a situation with a security guard and a velvet rope. Security uses a velvet rope or some kind of tape to set up some parameters and borders. The security guard then works the entrance. They are given criteria to examine, such as a valid driver’s license. If the person meets the criteria they are admitted. If they do not meet the criteria they are turned away. It’s that simple.

You’re probably wondering what this has to do with market research and work for that matter. Market research isn’t about asking questions for the sake of asking questions. Market research is about trying to help the business make better decisions. Over time I’ve learned that if you want to make quick, efficient, and quality decisions, you need to establish clear decision criteria. Essentially, you need to become a security guard. You need to set up your velvet rope and only let things through that meet that criteria. (That’s right. I consider myself a market research bouncer. The picture to the right is me if I lost some of my muscles.)

Embry failure and learning example. Last month the brand team tested some new data with customers. We had to make a decision on whether or not to share the data with customers in the market. In the beginning of the project I didn’t set up clear decision making criteria, so we swirled a bit whenever we talked about how the research was going (#Embryfailure). The swirling was a waste of time and didn’t get us closer to making any decisions. Then, I finally realized that I needed to set up some decision criteria to help us decide whether this data “worked” with customers or not. With that in mind we decided that in order for the data to “work” it would need to meet three requirements.

Accept– Customers would have to accept the data as something that could be true.
Resonate– The data had to cause customers to think more positively about Trulicity.
Implement– We had to feel confident that we could implement around any customer concerns.

We even took it a step further to establish the criteria that would have to be met for each of those three components. For example, for Accept customers had to accept the data could be true over all, was representative of their practice, and was high enough quality that they would accept the data as being factually accurate. What I soon noticed was that as soon as we had clear decision criteria, it became easier to decide if something worked or not. The decision criteria gave us a framework for making the decision and for talking about the decision. Overall, it became a lot easier to decide whether or not we should let the data past our velvet rope and into our club (#Embrylearning).

The challenge- Think about your role. Are you setting up clear decision criteria to help drive quick, efficient, and quality decisions?

Have a jolly good day,

Andrew Embry