Decision maps are key to ensuring the right guidance for staff so they can make better decisions, quicker and with more confidence. The result is a more agile organisation. Who doesn’t want that?

Anyone who has planned a family trip or tried ordering for a group at a restaurant knows how simple things are if one person has sole authority and makes all the decisions. Add just one more person and it starts getting complicated. Add a couple more and it gets complex. Why? Because people differ in their opinions and, as I wrote about last week, people have different perceptions of risk. In these examples, the risk is that the trip or the meal won’t be as enjoyable as expected. Hence the need to ensure adequate guidance for staff to make decisions within the organisation’s appetite for risk.

What is a decision map? For an example of one, please have a read of Chapter 8 Appetite for Business from my latest book Risky Business: How Successful Organisations Embrace Uncertainty. In essence it is taking an inventory of all the policies, frameworks, processes and systems and determining if they provide sufficient guidance to staff on the organisation’s appetite for risk.

A simple example is a check as to whether the financial delegations reflect the organisation’s appetite for financial risk.

An example of something that is typically underdone is guidance on innovation. While the organisation’s appetite for risk to achieve a specific objective may state that innovation is sought, what policy, framework, process or system sufficiently guides them to take risk within lower and upper boundaries? Both dollar boundaries as well as other boundaries such as environmental sustainability. A decision map can provide sufficient guidance.

If you want to know more about my thoughts on risk appetite download my whitepaper or, better still, buy my book and gain access to my latest risk appetite templates.

Stay safe!

PS. I’m thrilled to say my book Risky Business hit the #1 Amazon Best Seller list recently in the Risk Management Category. If you have read it and think it’s worthy of a review, I would greatly appreciate your time in leaving one. You would make this risk nerd very, very happy. You can email it through to me, info@bryanwhitefield.com, HERE.