Be better at decision-making and avoid costly mistakes

Success hinges as much upon doing things right, as it does upon avoiding mistakes.

Whilst the former largely depends on competencies, the latter critically depends on choices and decisions.

Competencies will get you in the same league as your competitors, but it is the quality of your decisions, which will ensure that you stay in the lead or manage to take the advantage.

Just listen to the accounts from sailors participating in big ocean races such as the Volvo Ocean Race or the Vendée Globe and you will realise that they often trace success or failure to a decision made at a given point in the race.

Developing the capacity of organisations to make the right decision at critical points during the realisation of opportunities is an essential ingredient of business success, in pretty much the same way as it makes the difference to the successes of teams in the world of ocean racing.

Ocean racing is also so similar in its challenges, pitfalls and dynamics to today’s business projects that it makes the perfect analogue to train corporate teams in quality decision-making, in ultra-competitive and rapidly changing environments.

It offers the additionl advantage of transposing the dilemmas and choices faced by companies in a sufficiently unfamiliar context, to avoid experience biases, enhance their learning experience and ensure a better behavioural change, as a result.

Subjectivity and biases in general are indeed by far the biggest threats to the quality of decisions. They have the potential to negatively impact several steps of the value realisation process. Hence, working on these steps and the decisions associated with them are key levers for project performance.

During an opportunity realisation, the steps where the biggest value gains or losses can be made are outlined in the schematic below.

ALL4ONE consulting has developed the ALL4ONE TROPHY, a business game, in which the preparation and participation in a sailing race around the world serves as backdrop for a value creation scenario covering all of the above steps.

During the game, design thinking, lean start-up and collective intelligence decision quality levers are explored, before being combined in the simulation to augment the competitiveness experience.

Participants in the ALL4ONE TROPHY learn to recognise the pitfalls leading to value destruction, experience powerful techniques to create value and use team intelligence to take advantage of events outside of their control. These learnings are then integrated back in their work environment.

The ALL4ONE TROPHY is a one-day event, which can be delivered at your premises, at an outside venue or online, as a standalone training, included in a performance reboot camp or a more comprehensive organisational development programme.