INTRODUCTION
Managers make countless individual decisions for which they are personally responsible and accountable. However, in most organizations managers collectively are also required to decide and implement decisions that will impact their entire organization simultaneously. It is these latter collective decisions that I refers to as “CORPORATE”.
In this series of six articles, I lay out a step by step process for corporate decision making. My experience has demonstrated that it both helps groups arrive at and implement sounder decisions and provides the sort of management accountability any organization has the right to expect from those in charge.
I suggest reading them in order because each step builds on what comes before. This article is STEP 4
MEASURING RESULTS
Even with a decision in hand and unanimous support, drawing conclusions about whether the decision has actually achieved its desired intent, will amount to a guess absent some clear criteria by which to judge.
Step four involves a group discussion designed to identify a finite set of indicators that would signal the decision has worked. It is also helpful to consider a set of indicators that would provide early warning the decision is either off track or producing unintended or unforeseen consequences.
In many enterprises these indicators are easily quantifiable. Profits, sales numbers, margin increases, productivity increases, dollar savings, recruitment statistics are easy to track and offer concrete evidence.
Conversely, decisions like reorganizations, adoption of new methodologies and work practices, job classification changes, pay adjustments, training and R&D investments, layoffs and key personnel assignments, usually resist reduction to concrete numerical results. Try anyway.
A great place to begin is with the simple question — “ideally, what would the results of this decision look like if it succeeds”? As implementation progresses, new success indicators may emerge. But just waiting for good things to happen suggests a decision was made with no clear end in sight.
It is not difficult to imagine a group debate over these success indicators. Those members who favored a different decision arguing their preferred option would have produced the same results, or these results would probably have happened on their own. But such metaphysical discussions are but another means for re-litigating old arguments, postponing implementation and are a waste of time. Focus discipline is required at this point.
Beyond the obvious advantage of the decision makers knowing what they are looking for, having a set of success indicators to communicate to the organization at large signals a seriousness of purpose and intent to follow-up. Corporate decisions — like those of individual managers — are essentially acts of faith. We believe our decision is the right thing to do but will only know for sure when we implement it and assess the results.
The group’s Process Monitor should record the results of these deliberations.
UPDATED May 2026
Categories: Exercising Responsibility, Leadership, Managing & Leading
What Best Mnagers Know & Do 
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