You can design a better product decision with the right information, clear ownership, decision authority at the right level and a process that makes sense.
From an Industrial Performance perspective, everything can look right. Then people get involved, and the reality can be very different.
The decision owner escalates instead of deciding, one function protects its own target, a difficult trade-off is postponed to the next meeting, or someone sees a problem but chooses not to raise it.
The decision may even be made, while people continue working as before.
This is where Human Performance matters.
Our Observation
We spend a lot of time designing how organizations should work through processes, roles, governance, systems and decision rights. All of these create important conditions for better product decisions.
But there can be a significant gap between how an organization is designed and how people actually behave when a difficult decision needs to be made.
A box saying "Decision Owner" doesn't mean someone will take ownership.
Better information doesn't mean uncomfortable facts will be raised.
A cross-functional forum doesn't automatically create collaboration.
A decision doesn't mean everyone will act on it.
Our Perspective
Human Performance is about what people actually do when it matters.
Consider a product decision where cost, performance and time to market are pulling in different directions.
From an Industrial Performance perspective, we need to know whether the right facts are available, whether the trade-off is understood, who owns the decision and who has the authority to make it.
Human Performance asks a different set of questions:
Will someone raise an uncomfortable fact when it challenges the preferred direction?
Will different functions look beyond their own targets and make the trade-off that is right for the product?
Will the decision owner actually use the authority they have, rather than escalate because the decision is difficult?
Can people challenge each other constructively without pushing every disagreement upward?
Once the decision is made, will people change what they do and follow through?
We often describe these things using words such as collaboration, accountability and adoption, but those words are too broad unless we translate them into critical behaviors.
If a behavior is critical to a product decision, we should be able to describe what we expect people to do, observe whether it happens and reinforce it until it becomes part of how the organization works.
Key Takeaway
A well-designed process, good information and clear decision authority create the conditions for better product decisions, but they cannot guarantee how people will behave when the decision becomes difficult.
Human Performance is about making the critical behaviors happen in practice and turning better product decisions into results.