Hard decisions are necessarily time-consuming: the solution is difficult to identify, and it takes time to get everyone bought into the idea or a combination of both.

But there's also a lot of inefficiency in the process, so much so that you can significantly increase your decision-making speed by making changes to each step of the process. Done correctly, you can cut your decision-making time in half.

So, in the case of an event with a 24-hour cycle and a similar day-long decision-action cycle, you could take twice as many actions in the same timeframe. Then, you're not just moving faster than events; you're much more able to take control and become significantly more proactive.

2x Your Decision-Making

Here's how to 2x your decision-making using the OODA loop as an example.

The OODA loop -- Observation, Orientation, Decision, and Action -- is a four-step process you might already be familiar with. You start by Observing what's happening before Orienting yourself to the situation (putting it into context). Next is Deciding on the best course of action before finally Acting on it.

Let's imagine that each step of the OODA loop typically takes six hours to give us that 24-hour cycle, and we'll say that the action phases remain unchanged. 

Now, let's also imagine a 24-hour event cycle. This isn't that uncommon when you think about how things develop. Markets open and close on a 24-hour cycle, people go to sleep and wake up, and even in a rolling news environment, there's still the concept of that morning or evening's broadcast.

So how can we speed things up so instead of matching the event cycle, we’re able to get well ahead?

Observation

Let's start with the Observation phase.

Begin by streamlining the process of gathering and analyzing data. That way, instead of spending hours searching for information, pre-build a curated flow of news to let you skip a lot of the collection, collation, and sifting required to separate the signal from the noise. Structure information thematically so you can immediately go to the segment you need. Now, instead of starting your research from scratch, you've got the relevant information to hand right away.

That's a huge time-saver, and we can easily cut the time required from six hours to just two. 

(You might think six hours seems a bit long for this, but try building a comprehensive baseline assessment of a location, collecting background country data, adding live news, and then reading through all of it: six hours will pass in a flash.)

So, the first step to accelerated decision-making is to pre-build data feeds that collect, clean, and curate the data that you're most likely to need when making a decision.

Orientation

Unfortunately, information without context isn't very helpful: we need to know what that information means for us specifically. We need to ask, 'So what?' we need to orientate ourselves.

Again, we can prepare tools in advance to help with this. These can range from a simple 3x3 matrix to complex models that compare the data feeds to your organizational sensitivities to put data into context. These tools take time to prepare in advance but significantly speed up the analysis or orientation phase. Again, it's very easy to see how these will cut down the time required, and again, we'll say that this cuts the time required from six to two, but in many cases, it's even less than that.

Decision

There are still efficiencies to make, however, as we can also accelerate the decision-making phase.

This is where you need to take the most care as you speed things up: the implications of a half-baked plan are much more significant than a robust plan built on partial information. Nevertheless, there are still ways to speed up this part of the process by pre-building tools, creating contingency playbooks for likely scenarios, and putting robust decision-approval mechanisms in place. These mean you don't skimp on the planning part of the process; you're just able to do everything faster.

Again, the time savings can be significant. In cases where you already have a scenario-specific playbook prepared, you can easily cut the decision-making and planning time down to a couple of hours without compromising the quality of your plan.

24 —> 12

Accelerating things in the Observation, Orientation, and Decision phases like this cuts the 24-hour process down to just 12 while still leaving plenty of time for action. That lets us work through two action cycles in one event cycle: quite a difference!

Here's what all these accelerations look like in sequence using DCDR as an example.

And remember, in this example, we don't try to cut down the action time. That's where the rubber meets the road, and some things can't be rushed. So we're not trying to accelerate the execution stage, although there are probably efficiencies you could make here too.

Simple, Not Easy (But Worthwhile)

Unfortunately, this is a case where the solution is simple but not easy: simple in that you can set up these efficiency systems beforehand, but not easy as these all require time, resources, and leadership agreement. And these services can get expensive: curated news feeds and sensitivity analysis tools aren't cheap. Plus, consultants and subject matter experts aren't always available. (That's why I built DCDR - to combine all of these services into an affordable, readily available package.)

Moreover, there are organizations where this simply won't work. Some organizations detest processes and pre-planning, and some seem to enjoy the feeling of chaos. In these kinds of organizations, don't even try to implement this kind of change (I'd look for a different job instead).

However, there are lots of other instances where you'll find willing partners who would love to speed things up. 

• Work with an efficiency-minded leadership team? ✅

• Just emerged from a difficult period for the organization where you always felt as though you were on the back foot? ✅

• Preparing for a major reorganization of the business or change to your operations and know tricky times lie ahead? ✅

In any of these cases, I'm sure you'd find a leadership team that was interested in making better decisions faster. A team that would be open to any of these changes, each of which makes them better prepared, faster, and much more proactive.

DCDR Updates

Country Forward-Looking Assessments

I'm pleased to announce that the complete forward-looking assessments I mentioned last week are now part of the country profile. About 80% of the countries include these now. (The others are still 'cooking' as I like to give the models ~90 days of information before I start any forward analysis.)

This, unfortunately, makes the country profile card a little busy and messy, but I am working on cleaning that up. I am also working on an on-demand function where you can request an email report with a completely updated country assessment. This will give you the most up-to-date information in a neater package.

Report Update Cycle

One point raised by a user was that some reports show the 'last updated' date as mid-December. I need to clean up how these dates appear, but for clarification, here's the planned country information update cycle.

• News headlines: updated every 15 minutes. These are what you see in the 'headlines' section.

• Current stability assessment: updated weekly Sunday eve / Monday early am. These might move to a daily cadence.

• Forward-looking assessments: schedule updates weekly on Sunday eve / Monday early am. These will also be updated after any on-demand request.

• Country Background Reports: updated quarterly.

Crisis Management Playbook Builder Coming Soon

You probably know that when things go wrong, you need a plan for that specific incident: a crisis management plan (CMP). But there's a lot of crisis-response work that can be codified beforehand in a playbook, essentially a set of crisis SOPs. These help you get the right people in the right place, with the right information, to make the right decision and to do it all efficiently. Unfortunately, these playbooks take a while to get right and can cost a fair amount if you use a consultant.

Luckily, I've had the opportunity to build a lot of these playbooks and have developed a robust template that's worked for organizations from all sectors all over the world. Now, I'm adding this to DCDR so you can build your own crisis management playbook, customized to your organization, in a fraction of the time. That way, if when things go wrong, you'll be able to respond much more quickly (particularly if you've also implemented the ideas in the blog post above).

This will be the first of the policy and plans building tools - look out for more soon.

Early Access is Filling Up

Finally, as a reminder, DCDR open access begins on February 1st. This is taking place on a batched, first-come, first-served basis. 

Limiting access like this is to ensure that I get everyone set up correctly, but it unfortunately also means that the farther down the list you are, the later it will be before you get access to the system. 

But early access is filling up fast, so head to dcdr.io and add your name to the waitlist to secure your place at the front of the line.

(Plus, early access users are being offered a significantly discounted access rate that you don't want to miss.)

There's no signup or credit card required; just add your email, and you'll get an invite to join as places open up.

~Andrew