DARE: a tool to aid decision making and communication

DARE describes 4 core stages of Decision Making. It requires you to ask certain questions at each stage of the process, and outlines discrete activities to undertake at wherever you are in the process.

DARE requires you to ask certain questions at each stage of the process and outlines discrete activities to undertake at every stage.

DARE also has the added benefit of reinforcing the need for courage and tenacity when making decisions. Increasingly, we are seeing the need for people to take greater risks in order to speed up the process of decision making and get ahead of their competitors. This can mean making a decision on the basis of just 80% of the information you would normally like to have. You should ask yourself, “Will that extra 20% be worth the delay?” It might also mean being prepared to ‘stick your neck out’ and make a decision that might ultimately be proved wrong. You should keep in mind that in most cases the real danger is not that you might make the wrong choice, but that you don’t choose at all!

The four sequential stages of DARE are described below.

DIAGNOSE – This is the stage where you determine the need to make a decision and begin to scope out what might be involved. Diagnosis always works best when it is a deliberate and proactive rather than reactive process. It requires you to go looking for decisions that need to be made and identifying opportunities that are worth exploring. [Check out our other model called ORCA for help with this.] Once you have spotted an opportunity, you need focus in on who the key players need to be; what the scope of the decision is; and what you are ultimately trying to achieve. At the end of this stage, you should be clear about your Objectives.

ANALYSE – When you are clear about what you want to go for, the Analysis phase involves exploring ideas and options and gathering relevant information that will lead you to the outcome you want. This involves testing out theories, checking data, working up feasible options and ultimately choosing the best one that you think will get you to your desired end point. This is also a period of potential conflict, since it is likely that a number of options will be identified, and different people will express their own preferences which might be different to yours. [You might wish to try out a Forced Pairs Analysis activity if you have multiple options.] This stage does require a commitment from everyone involved to to abide by the decision that you ultimately take.

REVEAL – This is the point at which you go public with your decision and communicate it to the relevant stakeholders and those who will be impacted by the decision. This takes careful planning to ensure that people are suitably briefed and understand what is required of them, and that they know the rationale behind the decision you have made. People always need to know ‘why’ you took a decision, as well as what they need to do as a result of the decision. Planning what and how you will communicate the decision will need to cover timing, methods, specific details, persons and in what configuration (singly or in groups). Once you have communicated the decision, you need to take appropriate action to make sure that it unfolds according to your plan.

EVALUATE – Never overlook the power and impact of this stage. Ongoing review of the progress of the decision when it becomes a reality, plus a full evaluation of the decision-making process itself delivers enormous learning that feeds into future decisions. Without time spent at this stage, mistakes of the past are continually repeated, and the opportunity to learn is lost. And without proper ongoing review, decisions that have become obsolete through changed circumstances continue to be enacted in a way that drains resources. It is a vital activity to check and monitor the relevance of a decision you took and whether it needs changing as a result of a strategic change or new external demands.

Conclusion

The key message of DARE is that there is no gain without risk. It takes courage to make decisions especially in times of uncertainty when there are more ‘unknowns’ than ‘knowns’ and where you might be afraid to make yourself stand out too much.

However, it is those people and those teams who do not allow uncertainty to slow down or kill off their decision making that ultimately deliver the greatest progress.

By following the principles and the sequence of DARE, you have a discipline which takes some of the risk out the process and gives you the greatest chance of deriving maximum benefit from the decisions you take.

You can download a DARE template from our free resources page to help you record your Decision making discussions and plans.