Men sleep well in the Inn of Decision.

Arab proverb

When chief executives throughout the world were asked to rate 25 attributes in order of importance, they put Ability to take decisions first, followed by Leadership, Integrity and Enthusiasm, in that order (see Idea 14).

Part Two focuses on the well-established logical or step-by-step process of making a decision. There are five constituent chords that you need to be able to master, though you may not always play them in the logical sequence that common sense suggests.

Previous generations, with their emphasis on rational models, tended to ignore the purposive activity of the depth mind. We now know that it plays a much larger role in decision making than they assumed. Your depth mind, for example, has often decided before your conscious mind is even aware of the fact!

It is simple to consider an individual making a decision in the first instance, but at work we are characteristically sharing decisions with others. As a leader you need to understand the options open to you, and develop the kind of judgement that enables you to choose the right one in the given circumstances.