I think what Marcia Blenko touched upon with the idea of employee engagement makes a lot of sense, and frankly it seems to be one of those things that matches up with human nature. I wouldn't expect the average person in any circumstance to put their fullest effort into something they don't have at least some interest in. In the state of nature there is the overriding interest of survival that always ups the interest in effective decisions, but in the contemporary working environment there's a lot more potential for slack. For instance, I can say from personal observation that someone who isn't especially interested in client relations will make especially good decisions in how they interact, and someone who isn't all that interested in the movement of desks and equipment likely won't ask all the probing questions about timing, dates, and impacts that senior leadership might want to dig for. A lack of interest means that much more conscious effort being required for maximized performance or decision making.
Beyond that, Blenko made some additional notes on what could impeded effective decision making. Among these there are issues such as the complexity of contemporary organizations, which I imagine can complicate the picture of who's in charge and who needs to be kept in the loop or otherwise. There can also be some negative leadership behaviors at play that complicate matters, such as a lack of discussion or the receipt of inputs before making a decision and executing (the Air Force might categorize these types of scenarios as "Ready, Fire, Aim" situations). Blenko also noted a lack of clarity in communications, which in most any organizational environment will spell at best minor frustration, and at worst major failure.
Overall, I think Blenko had a fairly thorough list of good decision making elements in considering quality, speed, yield, and effort. These certainly cover the bare minimums towards making a decision and getting it off the ground. For decision making in my organization, we're often tasked to present Courses of Action (COAs) to the commander, where we have to list our assumptions, list our COAs with full pros and cons of each one, and we might add in any limiting factors that span across all the COAs. We might even throw in a table that weighs important factors (such as cost and effect) and provide a weighted score. So for us, Blenko's elements would cover some of the considerations, but by itself it likely wouldn't satisfy my boss as he'll likely still want to know more about additional considerations and expected impacts. Quality considerations though would likely be very welcome.
Having viewed this video, it provides yet another lens with which to examine problems that come down from my bosses or through my e-mail box. Certainly, while we want to make the best decision we can within the confines of our deadlines, but I don't think we necessarily always think about how far out we want to take our decisions other than second or third order effects, and we tend to have our effort switches stuck at maximum output unless we thoroughly prioritized taskings. Something I might try and do with myself at least is to pause and at the very least ask if the decision I'm about to make is a knee jerk reaction based on trying to get something out of my way, perhaps sticking to doctrine, or if I really did in fact make a "good" decision. The only issue I could see is that measuring the quality of a decision would require identifying measurable, objective factors and a set of standards. I'm almost inclined to say it's one thing to Monday Morning Quarterback, but it would require some practice to quickly and efficiently establish measurable factors at the outset of every decision.
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