Cyndee Lake, MA is Chief Purpose Officer and Co-Founder of Blank Page, a people-focused design and strategy practice in Austin, Texas and holds a Master of Arts in the Human Dimensions of Organizations from The University of Texas at Austin. Blank Page designs innovative and immersive experiences that unlock untapped potential in individuals, teams and organizations.

Cyndee brings 30+ years of leadership and business success in a variety of industries. She has a proven track record of strategic thinking, sustainable change leadership, service and product design, business process improvement, project execution, cultural transformation and building high performing teams. She is well known for her ability to balance judgment and rigor in serving the needs of stakeholders, while simultaneously leveraging curiosity, compassion, constructive dialogue and experimentation to drive results. Cyndee’s core strengths include facilitation, communication, decision making, inspiring and enabling change, and solving complex business problems.

Decision-Making Practices

Those making, facilitating, or participating in strategic, operational, or tactical decision-making within any organization can benefit from developing five practices that are infused throughout the seminar.

Judgment and Courage

Knowing what kind of decision you need to make and what the criteria are for deciding and making the final call is not easy and requires judgment and courage to be effective. When multiple stakeholders are involved, establishing accountability and using effective escalation techniques are critical to reducing complexity and ambiguity while also increasing the confidence and speed of the decision.

Stakeholder Engagement

Exploring and understanding who needs to be involved in the decision and what roles/responsibilities are needed to achieve the outcome is critical to decision making in an organization. A strategy for how and when to engage identified stakeholders who have interest and influence in what you are doing ensures that you are able to unlock commitment to the decision.

Clear Line of Sight

Every decision should clearly align with the company’s values and strategy. The scope of the decision should be explicitly defined so that connections to what matters are logical and easy to understand.

Accountability and Commitment to the Outcome

Using a rigorous approach to define roles and responsibilities for each decision is instrumental in ensuring the smart use of your resources during the decision-making process.

Engaging Hearts, Minds, and Hands

Who, what, where, when, and how we communicate can accelerate and prioritize the action required from the decision, or unravel it. Communicating decisions with clarity and purpose will help to maintain a line of sight, establishes understanding, obtains commitment, and generates action towards great results.

This seminar is highly interactive and will be your catalyst to:

• Creating clarity in the decision-making process by defining what success looks like
• Building efficiency into the process by involving the right people, at the right time, with a focus on what matters to the organization
• Setting decisions up to right-size the process based on complexity, stakes, and potential impact
• Driving commitment to the decision by owning the outcome through clear communication and measurement of results
• Pushing decisions down into the organization to maximize efficiency

Location: UT Austin
Upcoming Program(s): TBD
Time: 9:00 a.m. – 4:00 p.m.
Continuing Education Units (CEUs): 0.6 CEUs will be awarded upon completion of this program (six hours of instruction)

One-Day Seminar Pricing:

• Standard Registration: $1,000
• UT System Staff/Alumni Registration: $650
• Educator, Nonprofit, Government, Military Registration: $650

If you have questions prior to registering, please see our Professional Training FAQ or contact Miles Husid, HDO’s Marketing Coordinator, at miles.husid@utexas.edu.

The majority of participants in our Seminars and Certificate Programs are mid- and upper-level professionals working in the business, nonprofit, government, or military sectors; however, professionals at all levels of experience are welcome to participate. There are no prerequisites for enrolling in an HDO Professional Seminar.

While all HDO Seminars are developed with wide-ranging applicability in mind, the following individuals and groups will likely find Decisions by Design most directly relevant to their work:

• Senior/Executive Leadership
• Middle Management
• Team Leaders & Supervisors
• Consultants
• Project Managers
• Fundraising & Development Teams & Individuals