476: Improving decision quality during stage gate reviews – with Wayne Fisher, PhD, and David Matheson, PhD

How product management teams can make better innovation decisions I am interviewing speakers at my favorite annual conference for product managers, the PDMA Inspire Innovation Conference.  This discussion is with two speakers who did a joint session, Dr. Wayne Fisher and Dr. David Matheson, whose session is titled “Improving decision quality during stage gate reviews.”  Recent findings from PDMA’s Outstanding Corporate Innovator award program indicate that highly innovative companies follow some form of stage-and-gate process, including agile-stage-gate, to balance risk and rigor in the development of new products and services. Also, a recent Society of Decision Professionals poll suggests that innovation decisions are a rich area for improvement. We will discuss gate decision best practices with Wayne and David. After nearly 3 decades with Procter & Gamble and training thousands of their managers on innovation, Wayne founded Rockdale Innovation to guide other organizations in innovation best practices. David has more than two decades of portfolio and innovation management experience. He cofounded SmartOrg, which provides software and services to support decision-making and managing uncertainty. This episode is sponsored by PDMA, the Product Development and Management Association. PDMA is a global community of professional members whose skills, expertise, and experience power the most recognized and respected innovative companies in the world. PDMA is also the longest-running professional association for product managers, leaders, and innovators, having started in 1976 and contributing research and knowledge to our discipline for nearly 50 years. I have enjoyed being a member of PDMA for more than a decade, finding their resources and network very valuable. Learn more about them at PDMA.org. Summary of some concepts discussed for product managers [2:39] What is decision quality? How do you know if you’ve made a good decision? Suppose my son, who is in his early twenties, goes to a party and has to make the decision whether to have a sober or drunk driver drive home. Suppose his whole group gets together and they decide to drive home drunk and everybody is safe. I would say that was a pretty bad decision. Suppose on the other hand, he says he is going to be the designated driver. I would say that’s a good decision even if he gets into an accident. What was the difference? At this conference we asked people what makes a good decision in their stage gate process. Most people said alignment with goals or expectations or that people were excited about it. People’s naive view is that alignment makes a good decision. It’s the equivalent of saying if everyone at a party decides to drive home drunk, that’s a good decision. People don’t think about what it means to make a good decision. Decision quality means looking at your options and seeing if they’re rich enough that there is a really good choice. See if the information you’re getting is relevant to the choices you want to make. Do you have metrics and goals you’re pursuing? How does the information come together into an integrated story to make a recommendation? Are the inputs connected to the outputs? You’d be surprised how many times people bring a great stage gate package and then decide to do something completely irrelevant based on what they want to do. You have to have commitment, including committing resources and having the intention to move forward on your decision. [5:23] What are some challenges with decision making in an innovation context? The Society of Decision Professionals, a professional society for people who are serious about decision-making, made a card to assess whether a decision is complicated indicating you should slow down when y...