Broken down to its simplest form, an organisation is a group of people making decisions in pursuit of a purpose. People make the decisions to hire or fire, invest or divest or insource or outsource. Individuals within teams make decisions; however, forming a collective mind and following the old adage ‘Two heads are smarter than one’ is the starting point of building high performance.High-performance teams make better decisions, faster. This may seem intuitively true to you, for some it may not. Some say slower, more considered thinking is required for better decision-making. However, quality people, given good information in a timely fashion, make decisions quickly because there is less uncertainty. It is the burden of risk posed by higher levels of uncertainty that slows decision-making.Critical elements for team decision-making: purposeSimon Sinek, in his book “Start with Why” raised the prominence of the power of purpose in driving organisational success. People need to know the why of what they do to feel motivated and committed.Clarity of purpose for teams starts with the why; however, Nike employees needed more than “Just do it”. They also needed to know what fulfilment of purpose looked like. That is where setting clear objectives drives success. Whilst strong evidence from research shows that faster and better decision-making improves performance, there is more concrete and academically accepted research on the importance of setting clear goals.Critical elements for team decision-making: TalentA motivated group of 12-year-olds can accomplish plenty; however, they are not going to run a corporation. You need a motivated and talented team.Talented teams have the right mix of skills, attitudes and creativity for the challenge ahead. Necessary skills are, of course, dependent on the challenge, while attitudes relate directly to the extent of the individual’s alignment to the purpose of the team and the organisation. Creativity thrives in the right environment.Once you have a team with the right skills, attitudes and creativity, their job is simply to identify the gaps between what they have achieved and what they need to achieve, build bridges in the optimum priority order, and get the traffic moving across them. The traffic could be data, it could be customers, it could be money. Whatever it is, it needs to flow across bridges built for the purpose.Sometimes, a particularly special type of bridge needs to be built, one that requires higher levels of creativity and experimentation. Talent alone will not necessarily build these types of bridges. A final ingredient is needed.Critical elements for team decision-making: ConnectionTo maximise the effect of motivated and talented teams, team members need a strong sense of connection with one another. They need to be in complete sync to build trust and find a flow to their decision-making, whether they are working across multiple time zones or sitting together in a room or online.When there is trust, the team is more confident in taking risks with experimentation and moving quickly.Creating the level of connection for strong decision flow can be facilitated through simple decision process mapping so the team has a co-created mental model of its decision making processes. Talented teams will identify how to improve the process.When there is flow to their decision-making, team members know and understand who is making a decision, and how and when it is being made. Further, they understand their role in supporting each decision as it is relevant to them, and they have worked out how to do so efficiently and effectively.Compelling decisionsHighly connected, near-synchronous teams deliver. They collaborate well and have the strongest buy-in for the outcomes produced. Because of this strong buy-in, combined with clarity of purpose and creative talent, they make compelling decisions. The team members feel a need to see them through. They put the shoulder to the wheel.Using an old rule of thumb, high-performing teams make compelling decisions that will achieve 80 per cent of goals 20 per cent quicker than those that lack clarity of purpose, creative talent or connection.