Get the crowd to Weigh in on Strategic Decisions

Leadership Tip of the Week

adapted from HBR

In most organizations authority for the most important strategic decisions is left to the highest-paid person’s opinion (HiPPO).

But relying on the judgement of one person or a few individuals is bound to lead to trouble. HiPPOs often are wrong, due to inherent biases, misinformation, and other types of noise that can cloud one person’s opinion.

To cancel out much of that noise, companies should integrate crowd voting into their decision-making strategies. Crowd voting integrates the expertise, knowledge, and perspectives of many people. These opinions can help shape a more well-rounded frame of reference, and can vastly improve the chances that a strategic decision will lead to success.

Crowd voting doesn’t render HiPPOs obsolete; rather, it encourages HiPPOs to work with the crowd in order to develop more-successful strategies.

Adapted from “The Antidote to HiPPOs: Crowd Voting,” by Karim R. Lakhani

Author: Andrew Mann

Managing Partner at NorthBailey. Having had senior marketing & insight roles at Tesco, Sainsbury's, Asda, Coop and M&S, I'm now using my experience & network to solve strategic marketing problems for NorthBailey clients View all posts by Andrew Mann