How to be a decisive leader
Improve your decision-making and problem-solving skills
Richard Hall
Objective
- To create better decision makers is my big, ambitious aim.
Did you ever see King Lear? There he was at the beginning of this play by Shakespeare, the old fool Lear, making leadership decisions about how to split up his kingdom amongst his three daughters. Showing little leadership and making bad decisions.
However, you, of course, are different (or can be) because you are taking the subject more seriously than he ever did, just by reading this far.
When you are a leader, whether a leader of a team or the whole organisation, people expect the same things from you:
- Clear, calm, well-considered decisions – they are looking for a cross between Confucius and Clint Eastwood – it is not just what you decide but the way you approach the decision-making process that impresses people.
- Clever, creative, effective problem solving – this requires the genius of Einstein and the charisma and speed of calculation of a Carol Vorderman – so no pressure, then.
What could be simpler? This book shows how to learn – in just half an hour – the basic art of solving one of business people’s biggest challenges. It shows you how to solve problems and make decisions. It helps disperse the fog of perplexity that descends on so many of us when facing a tricky problem.
It is a roadmap for the journey of getting better at making effective decisions about issues and solving those challenges that fill so many of our working lives.
And do not be embarrassed about asking how because these are not easy things to do without a bit of help.
Overview
The human brain is a contrary genius that thinks unpredictably, often responding to hidden biases. We improve our chances of thinking more clearly by being in a good mood, seeing things from other points of view and taking a long, broad view of things.
Before suggesting ways of improving our decision making and problem solving, we should try to understand a bit more about how the human brain processes data. A lot has been written on this, ranging from Thaler and Sunstein’s book Nudge to Kahneman’s Thinking, Fast and Slow. I even crept in myself as a minor contributor to this topic last year with my own How to Solve Problems and Make Brilliant Decisions. It was rather nicely described as ‘a primer in the subject’ by one reviewer.
TIP
Understand how the brain works. Learn to make allowances for the genius and irrationality of our brains. Understand the power of intuition and the difficulty this poses in managing creative people.
Until quite recently, we had assumed there were, quite simply, left and right brains, a rational and an intuitive side. Well, it is a bit more complex than that.
We have a huge intuitive brain that, just below our level of consciousness, is creating all kinds of biases and emotional jumps (‘I don’t like the sound of that’, ‘I feel undervalued’, ‘Watch out for that person; they might try and take something from you’, ‘This is boring; I’m turning off’, ‘I hate books on leadership decisions’) and we have a calculating brain that is effective when focussed, but it is rather lazy, too. If a problem gets too hard, it gives up, mutters ‘whatever’ and sulks. This allows the intuitive brain to take over and just guess the answer using the bundle of biases it has stored up.
All this begins to explain why human beings so often make erratic judgements or seem to cut off their nose to spite their face (as that very old expression goes.) The human brain is genius-like with all the disadvantages of a Mozart, Keats or Rembrandt. But the brain that could write Hamlet could also start the Second World War.
And this is why there is no easy way to pin down the decision-making process because a very hyped-up intuition always has its hand on the steering wheel. So, beware. But the three key factors for both decision making and problem solving are these:
1. See the big picture. Scan all the information broadly so you can understand swiftly what the key issues are and what the overall shape of the issue is.
- First get a sense of what the issue is all about – is it a big or small issue? What will the impact of making decisions about it entail? Is this a potentially life-changing challenge or just a business-as-usual issue?
ASSESS YOURSELF
Are you good at switching from seeing the big picture and then switching to delving deeply into detail? Assess whether you are getting the general sense of what is required quickly so you do not waste time.
- Then assemble as much data and background as possible, so you know a lot, but then decide what you need to know that you do not know and work out how you can get to know it most easily and effectively. (Beware being lazy – ‘I’ll Google it’ will not do. Usually, talking to people in the frontline will teach you most.)
- Keep on using the two key intellectual tools – the telescope that will enable you to gain a perspective and the microscope that will allow you to get close to the detail.
- Examples of problems: huge ones – Israel/Palestine, counter terrorism measures and freedom of the individual or the national debt; important ones – should we go through with this merger or acquisition, which will involve a big strategic decision (is it overall a good idea?); a smaller series of tactical ones – in the process of due diligence, do you discover reasons for not proceeding or for redefining the nature of the deal?; and much smaller ones – should we hire A or B? Should we go ahead with this product launch?
POTENTIAL PITFALL
You have got it! You have cracked the problem, but no one else gets it like you. Now see things from other people’s viewpoint. Do not bully them. Listen. Maybe you are missing something. The big trap is in being dogmatic.
2. How do all the key people really see it? Look at the issues on your table from as many perspectives as possible – remember there is unlikely to be just one solution – the smart problem solver, just like the smart designer, will come up with more than the one and only perfect solution (Bob Rotella, a well-known American golf coach wrote a book called Golf is Not a Game of Perfect. It is about fashioning a great score whilst accepting you must deal with the realities of mistakes you make.)
Here is a plan for avoiding being a dogmatist who cannot be flexible.
- Look at the issue from the wide variety of different stakeholder perspectives.
- Identify where the biggest relationship challenges are likely to occur.
- A good test is to visualise consequences – good and bad. Someone called this process a pre-mortem. Just imagine the stream of PR, good and bad, that will follow your decision, bearing in mind it is unlikely that everyone will be happy with it.
3. Be happy to be doing this. Relax and feel good that it is you making this decision and trying to solve the problem.
Be very conscious of how you feel. Are you fit and ready to solve a complex problem or manage a team of problem solvers so that their problem-solving muscles are in great shape? Are they coordinated to produce creative solutions or is it one of those moments when it is best to pause and wait?
Never make a life-changing decision (if you can avoid it) when you are angry, highly stressed or ill.
And never be rushed, feel rushed or look rushed when making a decision. Slow, thorough and thoughtful is good.
Context
This section discusses ways to deal with the lonely reality of the leader: how to behave, how to recognise that situation and also outlines a simple process you can use time and again.
You are in charge. You will be feeling a little lonely. You will be all on your own. The buck stops here. And, unfortunately, here means you. Hello, decision. Hello, buck.
But your skill is to listen, confer, plan, analyse, study, think (most of all that) and discuss, as widely as possible, all the aspects of the issue under debate and requiring resolution.
TIP
Have a simple plan of attack. Listen, confer, create a plan, study all the data, think hard, listen, confer… the way to crack difficult problems is always the same. Your brain and your ears should crack it between them.
Think of each of these elements… and more:
- Listen to your colleagues describing the issue and the challenges. Let things sink in. Immerse yourself.
- Confer with colleagues and stakeholders so everyone knows and agrees what is at stake.
- Plan an approach, timescale and a resource.
- Analyse all the relevant issues and demand to have all the data interpreted simply and clearly – ‘And this means precisely what?’ Big caveat. Keep asking why, until you really understand. Do not be fobbed off with jargon or technical gobbledegook.
- Study all the evidence carefully, making sure you have not missed anything that might be important and ignored. Let it all sink in and then:
- think – deeply and at length; think out loud; think when you are walking and, having thought,
- listen to others whose views you trust and will have insights and
- discuss the issues so they are clear.
This process is designed to avoid mistakes, to avoid you and your colleagues doing what you like as opposed to what’s needed and most of all to frame the decision that you’ll make so it is clear.
ASSESS YOURSELF
Reflect on your capacity for being fast on your feet and a flexible thinker. Assess your ability to play each situation on its merits. Ask if you are totally focussed on winning, not just on looking good or being right.
- Be flexible. Be prepared to change your mind or reassess. Always consider the decisions you make in the context of the real world you live in (when something beyond his company’s control went wrong – the devaluation of the Rouble – Chris Hood, president of Kellogg’s Europe, said, ‘This is our reality and we deal with it’).
- Be pragmatic. Above all, be pragmatic… idealists are fine and good but often lose in the battle for success. You are (in footballing terms) a striker. Score goals. Do not look pretty.
Depending on the size of your business, you will want to get lots of people’s views, but recognise, at the same time, you are treading that fine line between being a consultative sponge who appears indecisive and a remote, but ruthlessly decisive, dictator.
Challenge
Your biggest challenges relate to timetables and trying to do things too fast, being too dogmatic (U-turns can be good and a sign of pragmatic nimble thinking) and the struggle in getting everyone engaged with you in reaching a solution.
Challenge: It is up to you to be on your mettle and to make sure that you have thought through the process of decision making, just as you would think your way through preparing a recipe. Fast decisions, like fast food, sometimes come at a price. It is called indigestion.
TIP
Approach your thinking and planning process just as a chef does their meal. They have a recipe (a plan). They do lots of preparation (listen, confer, analyse). They get everything to hand – mis en place (decision meeting). And then they cook. This is the real decision time when split-second choices my need to be made if something goes wrong.
Challenge: You must undertake the rigorous process of thinking your way through all the key aspects of a problem so, when you decide to do x or y, you know it has the best chance of achieving the right result. Your job is always to improve the odds of success.
Challenge: Most of all, make sure you get the support from the people who day-by-day will live with and implement the decision to ensure it results in positive action.
Challenge: The decision that seems so important is only a means to an end.
Beware fixating on getting it perfectly right, as opposed to making it work.
Be pragmatic. You are there to fix things, not just be an idealist or perfectionist.
The right decision is not always the one that you, personally, would choose but the one that achieves the result the company wants and that satisfies the most important stakeholders.
ASSESS YOURSELF
There are some big questions to ask: Are you doing everything possible to get a good result that most people will get behind? Are you being smart (smart not just clever) and, above all, are you being pragmatic?
Challenge: Long experience shows you always need to have more than one option.
Do not ever assume there is just one right decision and only one.
You always need to have a Plan B.
Challenge: It is not easy. Do not be told by anyone that decision making or problem solving is easy. Anyone who says that usually is very foolish.
Challenge: Finally, get things done on time. On numerous occasions I have counselled people not to rush making a decision or try to shortcut solving a problem. Better to be right than early. But the realities of our lives are that we need to hit deadlines. Think of exams at school or university. In writing an exam paper, the word ‘whenever’ was not used. If you have to make a decision or solve a problem in a specified time, do your best in that time.
Key question: ‘How long have we got?’
Challenge conquerors
- Listen. Whether you are working in a large or small company, the views of others are relevant and can, if not taken into account, introduce unthought-of complexities.
- Be open-minded. Psychologists warn of the perils of pre-judgement. Our subconscious has already made up most of our minds for us and we are constantly having to resist biases that we are barely aware of in our thinking.
- One size does not fit all. Avoid the biggest challenge of all, which is the very human tendency to try and force fit this problem into resembling another one that previously we successfully solved. The greater the previous success, the greater the temptation to assume this new problem is similar.
An example of this was Quaker trying to repeat the success story they had with Gatorade by acquiring Snapple. It was a disaster. Or the thinking by RBS in 2007 that led them to imagine that the magic success that they had had in taking over NatWest (The Harvard Business Review called them ‘Masters of Integration’) could be repeated with ABN Amro. But it was a catastrophe… the world had changed.
POTENTIAL PITFALL
Your biggest threat is in believing that the solution you used successfully last time will, inevitably, work again. Each challenge is different.
Key development approach
Here are a series of tips and observations that will make you a better problem solver and decision maker. People are taught a lot of things, but the process of decision making is seldom taught in the context of today’s realities. Here is a mini guidebook on how to do it.
We used to have command and control models in business whereby the leader commanded, the employees obediently followed instructions and the leader controlled their progress.
If you were a totalitarian, it was completely wonderful.
Today, it is very different. People are empowered. They are encouraged to show their initiative. Stakeholders are involved in everything. Back in the 1960s, there was no such term as stakeholder. There were just steak-holders and they worked at Aberdeen Angus Restaurants.
- So, we have a lot more interested parties to involve and persuade. Identifying who all these are is critical. Make sure you do not omit to involve someone who is essential to the project and whose support could make all the difference.
- We have a lot more information. From flying without radar we are now aware of everything that happens when it happens.
- We live in a global environment. All our decisions are shaped by what is happening thousands of miles away.
- We cannot hide; social media sees to that. Our mistakes and misfortunes can become very public in seconds.
- Our behaviour is being changed by technology. We talk to robots now, which recognise simple commands – try calling British Telecom – ironic that they coined the slogan ‘It’s good to talk’.
TIP
Because everything moves so fast and there is so much information, we have to be selective. Be ruthless in selecting what matters most. Spend more time with people and less time with things.
Our attention spans are reducing as the amount of information we get increases.
More. More. More. Faster. Faster. Faster.
And, you know what? It is getting more exciting and more challenging.
And it requires new skills they did not tell you about a few years ago.
Step 1: You need new skills
- Empathy – people are the key, people and how they feel, not technology. That wise old bird Jack Welch, one-time boss of GE, said: ‘Stop worrying about technology and start worrying about who trusts you.’
- Analysis – you have to able to work with all that data without being swamped by it. You need to able to weigh up a lot more stuff and see it from a lot of different angles.
- Creativity – ordinary been-there-seen-that sort of solutions do not work. Rosser Reeves was the intellectual powerhouse behind the advertising agency Hobson Bates and he created the idea of the unique selling point (USP). As so often happens, subsequently, this idea fell somewhat out of favour. But, today, we have to ask ourselves constantly, ‘Is what we are doing distinctive, different and a bit original?’ Creativity no longer resides in the advertising agency. It is what feeds the board room – or else.
Step 2: You need new ways of behaving, thinking and proceeding
Do not panic
You need to stay calm. As a leader, people will look to you to see how you respond to change and complexity. Martin Sorrell, founder of the advertising and marketing services conglomerate WPP, said we have to get used to mess to survive in the 21st century.
Crisis is normal. Customer expectations have never been higher. Change is usual. Normal state of affairs is very unusual.
Be prepared to improvise. Often, we are straying into unknown territory.
POTENTIAL PITFALL
Beware excitement. Change makes everyone twitchy: your people, your customers and you. You need to avoid panic, stress and raised voices. Change is normal. Go on; you tell them. Change is the new normal.
Think
Sit down and think.
You know – that process of using your mind to create new connections, test new ideas, unravel that tangled ball of competitive string that is the market you used to dominate and work out how to get the best and the most out of the key talented people reporting to you.
Thinking is hard. You use a lot of calories doing it. The world stands still and you are exhausted. Well, you will be, if you think hard enough.
As a leader, you will know more than most, but not everything. No one knows everything.
So, if you do not know something, just say: ‘I do not know’, but then find out. Do not busk it and pretend you do know when you do not. ‘I do not know’ are powerful words.
Think out loud – with your colleagues – that often helps. Getting a thought from your mind into and then out of your mouth helps shape it and, then, as it gets batted around by colleagues, it turns, hopefully, into something useful.
ASSESS YOURSELF
Are you being honest with yourself? Are you giving yourself space and time to think? Are you being candid about saying you do not know when you do not? Are you sharing your thoughts with your colleagues?
What is at stake here?
Think about what you risk losing and what you stand to gain. Risk and reward is at the heart of all business affairs. And any form of decision involves some level of risk.
Be neither a pessimist nor an optimist – weigh up the odds and stakes. Do not bet the house on a reckless gamble.
Your style of leadership will be seen acutely in the way you behave when asking about the size of the prize and the cost of the loss.
The leader who spends too long on trivia and rushes the big decisions will soon be found out as a chancer (and, potentially, a loser).
Plan
Strange how many of us fail to have a clear ‘this is how we work’ process. If we do, our lives becomes a lot easier.
You need to work out a timeline, a team accountable for working on a decision or problem-solving focussed project, a budget, the resources needed and the way of working – this is the process. Good decision making now usually is a collaborative process with good clear chairing of meetings.
Before you go very far, you need a proper plan that everyone understands.
A word on clarity – the most underused word in business. So much of business falters around two things – poor communication and an unclear journey plan. Try to keep your plan clear and simple:
- Here is where we are trying to go.
- Here is how we are going to get there.
- Here is how long we have got.
Treat every challenge as a new one.
There is an old rubric that says ‘Do not constantly reinvent the wheel’. But not all wheels are the same. A wheel on a Corgi toy car is not the same as a wheel on a JCB heavy load transporter or a steering wheel on a Formula 1 racing car. Yet, we are psychologically prone to look at an issue and see what issue it is like that we have dealt with before. A case of ‘all wheels are the same’.
One of the most common causes of disappointing results in examinations is the candidate answering the question they wanted to have been asked and not the one they were actually asked.
Read the brief. Understand the issue. Deal with that. Do not look for similarities to other challenges – treat this one on its particular merits.
Focus
Do not multitask. With a few exceptions (Napoleon was allegedly one of them), the human brain is not set up to be a successful juggling machine. Whenever you can (sometimes you have to juggle a bit), do just one thing at a time. Spend 100 per cent of as little time as it takes to complete a task.
Good leadership is best characterised by a person’s ability to prioritise; by their ability to avoid being distracted by trivia.
The ability to focus and concentrate on a key issue is a rare talent. Develop it.
Sit, think and focus.
And, if you find you are getting stuck, try and stand back and get a broad view of what is going on. Take a wide-angled view of things; do not get bogged down in, and distracted by, detail.
Do not try and do too much
I recall working with a CEO who proudly told me he had 100 new initiatives. When I asked whether this was not, perhaps, too many and which were the three most important ones, he got rather cross. ‘They are all critical,’ he said. He was wrong. They could not be. It is a cast-iron rule to limit to a handful the key priorities on which you are focussing and on which decisions need to be made.
Decision making is not easy – concentrate on just a few big issues rather than lots of little ones.
Rational mind versus intuitive mind
First of all, we have to accept that our emotions will always be involved in thinking, problem solving and decision making (like it or not). Even as we are congratulating ourselves on being supremely rational and thinking like a Rolex, our intuitive thinking is at work just below the level of consciousness ferreting around and taking a series of prejudiced and emotional judgements. We all have those I-didn’t-like-the-look-of them moments when we meet someone for the first time.
ASSESS YOURSELF
What we need to do is consciously balance our intuitive and rational mind:
- How do I feel about this?
- What do I think about this?
First not fast
The goal is to succeed. Decisions and solutions to problems are good only if they work.
Being a winner matters.
Being a decisive person matters much less.
And being a dictatorial Usain Bolt of a decision maker, does not matter at all.
So, take your time… most people rush decisions unnecessarily.
There is an illusion that the modern-day fact of life that speed gives you a competitive advantage extends to decision making and problem solving.
It does not.
TIP
Do not rush your decisions. Rushed impulsive decision making usually ends up being a process of guessing and hoping for the best.
Be flexible if events change
Have choices – do not pursue just one idea, one cast-iron strategy or one decision.
Be ready to change.
Albert Einstein said: ‘The true definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.’
We are congenitally averse to changing our minds once we have decided what we are going to do. I guess lemmings feel the same way when their leader heads towards the cliff shouting, ‘Follow me’.
It is never too late to change your mind if there are good enough reasons to question the validity of your original decision.
POTENTIAL PITFALL
Be firm about not vacillating when it comes to a decision. Never think, ‘The decision has been made. It is final.’ That is bad thinking. Never be so dogmatic as to be frightened of changing what, in the clear light of a new day, seems wrong.
Avoid wasting time
I was talking to John Scott who used to be HR director at investment bank Lazard and then PWC Middle East. He now runs a mediation company called Abune. We share a dislike of the time wasting that pervades all big companies – unwieldy processes, interminable meetings and all that stuff.
His prescription for saving time is mercifully simple:
- Identify priorities.
- Ignore everything else, but do not be afraid to change those priorities, as long as you do not simply add to the list.
- Have a ruthless focus on what is important, rather than simply urgent, interesting or distracting.
- Identify time wasters – people, procedures, activities – and exclude them from your life.
- Keep meetings to a minimum and keep them short.
- Use technology to avoid travelling (and avoid flights, wherever possible).
- Leverage and engage with those around you, regardless of whether they report to you or are part of your team.
- Spend time with colleagues, friends and your thoughts (done properly, this is rarely a waste of time).
- Take time off to rest and so ensure you can do all the above.
This is all very sensible and it struck me that mediation was the quintessential form of decision simplification. It is about how to find your way to a resolution quickly, fairly and cost effectively. And it is about how to reduce some of the subjective quirks from the argument.
(But I disagree with him about flying, only because I love the energy and buzz of airports and the ability to sit and think in isolation in that 35,000-feet-high tube.)
Look after yourself
You will be more effective if you feel good.
So, stop and relax every now and again – you are a human being not a machine. (That is what makes you so special.) Let your unconscious do some work for you. Even when you are asleep, the magical microprocessor in your head is hard at work sorting out files, deleting stuff and making connections.
Look gently into the middle distance and let your mind wander around the topic. Do not look for answers; let questions form instead. Encourage yourself to dream and just let your magic computer do its stuff. Finally, try to be in a good mood and always be an optimist (research shows optimists live longer).
It is simple – good vibes mean more fluent thinking.
Work with people
In this world of technology it is still a team of people that makes the difference. Learning how to work with, manage and communicate with other people is what helps any leader make better decisions.
The three keys to this are:
- Spend a lot of your time establishing how people feel and what is stopping them perform even better. The more we empathise with them, the more we will surprise our people with their powers to excel.
- Do not interrupt people, listen to what others say and give them time to develop their ideas. This is not easy, as some of us are not blessed with an excess of patience.
- When you have made a decision, make sure others buy into it. If they do not do that, then it will not work. Research shows that most strategies fail to work when the decision maker and those executing the plan are not aligned or (worse) have not gone through the conferring process at all.
POTENTIAL PITFALL
Failure to listen and the tendency to interrupt people is irritating for them and disastrous for you, as it cuts off the supply of honest opinion. Besides which, being like that will not paint you as a people-person. Be patient. Listen.
Goals, not fancy footwork
You will be praised for the decision being successfully fulfilled, not just for your being decisive.
It is getting results that matter
And results happen when a decision is executed properly.
I have said the ability to see things in the round and to be able to stand back is vital. So, too, is the ability to get down into the detail, but not get bogged down by it. Quite simply, the small stuff matters. Talk to any successful person and be impressed (always) by their command of detail.
Do not (finally) let clever people pull the wool over your eyes. They often get things wrong (remember those very clever economists and bankers).
When someone who works with you sounds clever to the point you cannot really understand them, pause and say ‘Explain that again. I don’t get it.’ Repeat until you do get it or they simplify their message and, in the process, maybe they realise they were slightly misleading you in the first instance.
ASSESS YOURSELF
Are you handling those clever, but convoluted, people around you well? Sometimes their cleverness is not quite so clever when you really get down to it. Are you smart enough not to be intimidated by show-off brains?
Get those energy levels up
Half a century ago there were a mass of maxims in circulation that grandparents would state as irrefutable truths. One of these was ‘more haste less speed’, which means rather less than it sounds but I think, I think it means reconnoitre with great energy, then operate with speed, but do not rush towards your destination. Anyway, that is what I want it to mean. Energy in any business situation is critical because it engenders ambition, action and ideas.
But the best leaders create a vibrant aura around their organisation, not one of stress and frenzy.
They want a decisive (but not a rash culture) with fast thinking and measured execution.
Success
You need a plan to make successful decision making and problem solving endemic in your team. Launch a project so you all focus on simplifying and improving your skills. Lead the process of improvement. Do not try to do it all yourself.
There has been plenty written about leadership where decisiveness always gets a good press. We all make a lot of decisions every day, from ‘What shall I have for breakfast?’ through ‘Shall we launch that price promotion?’ to ‘Shall we overhaul our organisation to right-size it?’ (‘to right-size’, by the way, means making a lot of people redundant – don’t you just love euphemisms like these?).
So, how will you judge your success in becoming a better decision maker and cleverer problem solver?
First of all, you succeed by deciding to improve at both decision making and problem solving and by launching a project to that end that involves you and your immediate team.
You might call it Project Cut Through. Run it for, say, six months and set some simple objectives such as:
- We will improve the quality and quantity of our investigation of the evidence we use to do both, so we can feel certain we are better informed.
- We will run more energetic, decisive meetings so we feel we are moving faster (albeit circumspectly) towards a better solution.
- We will become – as a team – better at conferring, debating and, above all, listening.
Then, every month, do an informal check on progress, based on thoughts and feelings – if it does not feel different and better, it probably is not.
- What do you (the leader) think and feel?
- What does your team think and feel?
- What do your boss (or bosses) think and feel?
Then do a check based on the problems solved and decisions made on an objective basis to show how effective, thorough, easy and fast your problem solving and decision making has actually been.
Checklist
Changing the way you think and behave needs constant checking to ensure you are applying all the key lessons.
Here is a simple checklist of what you must have done:
- Have you fully and thoroughly understood the issue and what all the ramifications of the decision will be?
- Do you know the size of the prize if it works and the cost of the loss if it does not work?
- Have you done all that you can do to enhance the odds of success?
- Have you talked it through thoroughly with all the stakeholders?
- Have you satisfied yourself that your decision will achieve the results that you and the stakeholders (or most of them) want?
- Have you got solid buy-in from those who have to action the decision and have you got a robust plan for executing it?
- Are you tracking the success (or otherwise) of the decision made and the problem solved – what have you learnt from the process? How would you do it differently or better next time?
And here are eight fundamental checklist questions for you, personally:
Yes. It is decision time
Do you really understand the process of decision making and the stages that people go through when solving problems? Click here to review.
- Confer, listen, persuade: Are you really aware of what you need to do when working with stakeholders and colleagues? Click here to review.
- Have a plan: Do you know how to create a great plan for a problem-solving or decision-making project? Click here to review.
- Think: Can you really think brilliantly? Do you know how to get the best out of your magical computer – your mind? Do you use the whole of your mind? Do you understand that you are much more emotional about decision making than you ever thought? Click here to review.
- Learn to focus: Are you sure you know how best to keep yourself and your team’s minds on track? Click here to review.
- Treat every issue on its merits: Are you sure you are not taking a shortcut and treating a challenge as one that looks rather like one of those we have done before? Click here to review.
- Being fast versus being first: Has the harsh reality of rushing at decision making sunk in? Are you going to be more circumspect, careful and considered in what you do when deciding or solving issues? Are you getting the balance between urgency and thoughtfulness right? Click here to review.
- Being flexible is not that natural: Are you going to get better at changing your mind when circumstances around you and the company change? Are you sure you know how? Click here to review.
- Being well and happy is key: Do you know how to feel better, relax more and, therefore, be a better and more decisive leader? Click here to review.