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May 5, 2021

Read time: 7min

Decision quality in the age of urgency

Market Logic Team

Organizations that make fast, high-quality decisions perform better than organizations that don’t. Perhaps that’s no surprise. But it’s also not the norm. A global survey by McKinsey reports only 20 percent of their respondents think their organization excels at decision making. And for the majority of McKinsey’s respondents, decision-making is slow. Decision-making takes up more than 30 percent of respondents’ working time, and the majority of respondents report they aren’t even able to use that time effectively.

On the other hand, companies that excel at decision-making leverage agile decision-making processes, and they see clear gains. McKinsey reports winning organizations “make good decisions fast, execute them quickly, and see higher growth rates and/or overall returns from their decisions.” In other words, fast decisions don’t necessarily correlate with low-quality decisions, especially when decision-making is enabled at the right level.

At Market Logic, we believe agile decision-making is about scaling insights where they have the biggest impact in your organization. When you empower the people making frequent, high-volume, or cross-cutting decisions (what we call here “mid-tier” decisions), your organization reaps the benefits.

Make quick decisions at the right level

What do winning organizations do differently in their decision-making processes? According to McKinsey, winning organizations make the right decisions at the right level, whether that’s low-volume but-high-stakes decisions made at a high level or high-volume or cross-cutting decisions made at a mid-to low-level.

At Market Logic, we find it helpful to break decision-making types into three tiers:

First-tier decisions. First-tier decisions are automated, mostly digital, with high volume and low risk, and can be executed by AI and algorithms in split-second time. They include, for example, a product recommendation when a shopper is filling their basket online, or a fraud detection check when they pay with a credit card.

Mid-tier decisions. Mid-tier decisions are high-volume, frequent decisions that together can have a large impact on the company. These decisions can be tactical “cross-cutting” decisions, like pricing, new product launches, updated packaging, and new marketing campaigns. They’re executed in days and weeks and often repeated.

But mid-tier decisions can also be decisions narrower in scope and even more frequent (think daily) related to marketing and purchasing. According to McKinsey, these “delegated” decisions are typically best made directly by those who are closest to the work and can sometimes be delegated to smart algorithms and artificial intelligence.

Third-tier decisions. Third-tier decisions aren’t made regularly but are high stakes, like setting a company’s annual budget or a decision to diversify into a new industry. This is the type of decision made at a high level within the company often supported by a mature process that is resourced extremely well

Enable mid-tier decision making at scale

Insights are the raw material of well-informed, actionable decisions at all levels of decision-making in an organization. But in the mid-tier, where decision-making is extremely high volume and decision-makers are overwhelmed with stockpiles of structured and unstructured data from a vast amount of sources, your organization needs relevant insights delivered to the individual decision-maker just in time.

Expert and machine-supported curation enables quality and relevance. Reach can be achieved by digital distribution making those insights easily accessible as a self-service.

Scaled insights help your business decision-makers make insights-driven decisions, so your organization can hit that sweet spot in decision-making agility.

You don’t want to bottleneck your mid-tier decision-making. It’s critical for the health of your organization that the people making frequent decisions have quick access to all the insights they need when they need it. Otherwise, you end up undermining your organization’s decision-making with cherry-picked, biased insights, or decision-makers paralyzed by information overwhelm.

If you’re running a truly insights-driven organization, your people feel empowered. Insights at scale save time so your decision-makers can go the extra mile to keep confirmation biases in check with well-rounded, competing information.

The benefits of insights at scale

When insights are systematically embedded in the daily work lives of decision-makers, your organization sees the benefit in revenue and time savings. We call these companies “insights-driven organizations.” Research shows that insights-driven organizations reap the benefits of growing revenue and organizational efficiencies.

For example:

Not only that, but insights-driven businesses see:

How do you scale insights for agile decision-making?

This is where Market Logic comes in. We provide an end-to-end insights solution at scale, so your organization can transform, innovate, and grow with fast, quality decision-making. Our centralized insights solution gives your organization the tools you need to deliver insights at the speed and scale of the business, so people can self-service the insights they need when they need them.

Market Logic-powered insights platforms help the world’s leading brands eliminate bottlenecked organizational silos so decision-makers can quickly learn from each other’s experience and make tactical, cross-cutting decisions across segments, product lines, and markets.

No more information overflow or biased cherry-picking. Our insights storytelling tools help your experts curate a clear, holistic view of the facts, at scale, to ensure all the relevant insights are on the table. Stories on strategic topics are curated, updated, and promoted to target specific roles and clarify the big picture with context.

Are you ready to run an insights-driven business? We look forward to hearing from you. Request a demo today!