We all have come across the classic adage in some form or manner: The quality of the information at hand determines the quality of our decisions.
In today’s business environment, the problem is no longer scarcity of information but an excess of it. With dashboards, analytics, and AI-generated insights flooding every department, the real challenge is separating what’s useful from what’s distracting.
Consequently, the difference between a good decision and a poor one often comes down to how effectively leaders filter signal from noise.
This article, inspired by Jim Collins’s book Good to Great, provides insight on creating an environment where individual viewpoints are shared and the truth is heard. These best practices may prove beneficial to you and your organization.
Creating the Conditions for Truth
Advancements in technology and connectivity have levelled the playing field for companies and organisations in their quest for gathering information. Great companies differentiate themselves from the rest through their ability to turn data into information that cannot be ignored.
In any decision situation, the amount of relevant information available is inversely proportional to the importance of the decision - Paul Dickson, writer.
If we break the process of decision-making into its simplest form, it is a two-stage process: The first stage is gathering the right information, the second stage is what you do with that information.
The right decisions reveal themselves when you start with an honest and diligent effort to determine the truth of your situation. How to ensure we have the “right” information before making a decision?
What counts as the “right” information is rarely obvious. It depends on how open teams are to discussing uncomfortable truths, how leaders handle dissent, and whether organizations are designed to surface insights rather than bury them.
Even the best information can mislead if it is interpreted without context. The most effective leaders go beyond collecting data; they create conditions where insight can emerge. Some of the ways in which they do this are as follows.
Lead With Questions, Not Answers
In complex organizations, curiosity becomes a leadership advantage. Leadership does not mean coming up with all the answers and then motivating your team to follow them. It means having the humility to accept that you might not possess a complete understanding of all the answers and then asking questions that lead to the best possible insights.
Asking questions improves interpersonal bonding. Informal meetings with groups of managers and employees that begin with questions like “Can you help me understand?” and “What should we be worried about?” can become a forum where current realities are exposed.
Good questions are worded in a way that causes the other person to start talking rather than responding briefly.
"Seek first to understand, then to be understood", Dr. Stephen R. Covey, author of The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People.
Questions and thoughtful answers promote smoother and more effective interactions, strengthen rapport and trust, and lead groups toward discovery.
Modern companies such as Amazon and Netflix have institutionalized this principle through mechanisms like narrative memos and data-driven reviews that begin with probing questions. Curiosity helps teams move toward shared understanding and away from assumption.
Engage in Dialogue and Debate, Not Coercion
Research shows that while executives in the 1960s spent less than 10 hours in meetings, today’s executives spend about 23 hours a week in meetings.
A study by Harvard Business Review found that 71% of senior managers considered most meetings “unproductive and inefficient.” Positive and ideological dialogues and debates can transform discussions and meetings by boosting productivity and team engagement.
Nucor transformed itself from a company without culture and direction in 1965 to being one of the best-run steel companies in the US and the twelfth-largest steel-producing company in the world by getting the right people on board and using debate to evolve the company’s strategy.
True dialogue invites dissent and prevents groupthink. This has become especially vital in remote and hybrid workplaces, where silence can easily be mistaken for agreement.
When teams feel safe to challenge assumptions, they move from defending positions to discovering possibilities. Productive debate helps organizations uncover clarity and drive meaningful progress.
Conduct Autopsies Without Blame
The cigarette company Phillip Morris bought the 7UP brand in 1978 for $520 million as an entry point into the soft drink business. Strong competition from Coca-Cola and Pepsi eventually forced the company to sell the 7UP brand at a huge loss in 1984.
Phillip Morris executives openly discussed the entire situation, looking for reasons for the failure instead of scapegoats to blame. The then-CEO Joe Cullman, in his book I’m a Lucky Guy, implied that he should have listened better to the people who challenged his decision to buy 7UP in the first place.
In an era when leaders often go to great lengths to preserve their track record—claiming credit for success while deflecting responsibility for mistakes—Joe Cullman set a different tone: “I will take responsibility for this bad decision. But we will all take responsibility for extracting the maximum learning from the tuition we’ve paid."
Conducting autopsies without blame goes a long way in creating an environment where the truth is heard.
This concept appears today in agile retrospectives, post-mortems, and project reviews across industries. The goal is to learn, not to assign fault. When teams know that missteps will be examined constructively, they share more openly and correct course faster, which strengthens organizational resilience.
Build “Red Flag” Mechanisms
Bruce Woolpert, CEO of Graniterock, a construction product company, instituted a “short pay” policy to understand their customers’ perception of quality. It gave customers full discretionary power to decide whether and how much to pay on an invoice based on their own subjective evaluation of satisfaction with a product or service.
Customers do not need to return the product or call Graniterock for permission. They simply circle the offending item on the invoice, deduct it from the total, and send a cheque for the balance.
“You can get a lot of information from customer surveys, but there are always ways of explaining away the data. With short pay, you absolutely have to pay attention to the data. You don’t know that a customer is upset until you lose that customer entirely. Short pay acts as an early warning system that forces us to adjust quickly, long before we would lose that customer.”
Do you see potential for implementing any of these practices within your organization? Keep in mind that a process or methodology that suits one organization may not necessarily apply to another. An organization’s ability to adapt to the dynamic environment within which it operates determines its survival and ensures its future success.
Today’s equivalent of a “red flag mechanism” might include real-time analytics dashboards, employee sentiment tools, or customer churn predictors. Regardless of the technology used, the principle remains consistent: build systems that surface discomfort early, while there is still time to act.
Turning Insight into Action
These four practices share a common thread: they turn information into shared understanding.
When leaders encourage questioning, foster debate, learn from mistakes, and create mechanisms for early insight, they move beyond managing data and build a culture that values truth over comfort. Over time, that culture becomes a company’s competitive advantage.
Therefore, the importance of the right information to support business decisions cannot be overstated. Once you have equipped the right people in your organization with the right information, setting your goals and strategies comes naturally.
Great organizations treat each decision as part of a feedback loop. They act, learn, and refine their approach based on what the data and experience reveal. When teams operate this way, information evolves from static knowledge into a living system for continuous improvement.
