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DECISION-MAKING
Resolve and Execute Decisions Promptly

Motion beats meditation—once you’ve contemplated the situation enough to know what actions to take. Too often, indecision rules in the workplace, because decision-makers fear making mistakes. Yet the occasional mistake is the price of effective decision-making. It’s better to take a wrong turn than no turn at all. You can always change direction to correct an error or to meet a new threat or opportunity head-on. Dithering is neither effective nor efficient, and a successful business leader will avoid it.

In addition to making decisions that push you ahead, you have to decide to fix what’s already wrong in your team or organization. Don’t fall for the belief that disagreement within the team is something you should squelch. Friction can be positive, as long as it lets you see all sides of the story before you make the final decision.

Once you’ve made a decision, act on it. In business, the only thing that really matters is results. You don’t get results until you execute, so trade theory for action and get moving. When you’ve got a rough plan of action in place, move from meditation to motion—and stay in motion until you’re done.

RESOLVE INDECISION

Procrastination. Perfectionism. Waiting for more information. Fear in all its forms. There are dozens of reasons—maybe hundreds—for staying safely within your comfort zone rather than stepping out into the dangerous, prickly world of change. Some may even seem logical. After all, you will face change whether you like it or not, so why deliberately add even more to the agenda?

Well, there’s the old “stagnation is death” argument: If you don’t change, you can’t grow. But maybe you don’t care about growing, only surviving. If so, answer this question: is spending a career fighting rearguard actions as everyone else tries to run over you worth all the effort? Wouldn’t life be easier if you were pushing forward—or even better, running at the front of the pack, completely in the clear?

The Curse of Caution

Even ambitious people have a tendency to overthink things. But thinking for too long quickly hits a point of diminishing returns. In the words of philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson, “An ounce of action is worth a ton of theory.”

There’s an image making the rounds on the Internet titled “Executive Decision Making System.” It shows both faces of a penny, with heads labeled “Yes” and tails labeled “No.” There have probably been times when you wish you could just flip a coin to settle something, rather than wading through the pros and cons. But don’t you feel better after having made a decision? Most of us do.

Instead of digging in your pocket for that coin and letting fate make the decision for you, test your choices against these imperatives:

• Core values, mission, and vision. If you’re in alignment with your organization’s core values, some decisions will come surprisingly easily. Ditto for mission and vision.

• Outcome. Follow the decision to its logical conclusion. Can you see danger lurking somewhere down that path? Is this a slippery-slope choice that could lead to other bad decisions? Does one possible outcome satisfy you more than the others? What contingency plans can you put into place?

• Return on investment (ROI). This is crucial for most businesses. Will your decision make your company more money than it spends? Include all the factors you can think of, and remember: it’s what happens in the long run that counts. Saving money this month by laying off a third of your workforce won’t help you long term if the rest keel over from exhaustion or leave in droves, causing your company to fall apart.

• Opportunity cost. Every choice you make closes other doors. If you decide to do something, what will it keep you from doing in the future? Is what you skip worth missing out on? What other trade-offs will you face?

• Efficient use of time and resources. Will this decision slow workflow and efficiency in your organization? If so, you’d better choose “tails,” unless some other benefit offsets the wasted resources.

Make Up Your Mind, Already!

You make a decision even when you refuse to act, but that’s no better than depending on a coin toss. Don’t simply react to the world as it changes; be proactive about changing it. Give all your business decisions careful consideration before you make them, but don’t let meditation overcome motion. And never ever let chance dictate your organization’s fate because you failed to make a decision.

But What If You’re Wrong?

This question plagues all decision-makers, from rank amateurs to seasoned veterans. If you’re wrong, so be it. A wrong decision usually won’t decide the fate of your organization or even an individual. Even if it does, at least you didn’t sit around and do nothing. You tried.

You probably know the consequences of analysis paralysis. “Vapor-lock” of the brain can kill a project through indecision as surely as pulling its funding would. In fact, pulling the funding is cleaner. Then the project dies suddenly, rather than flopping around like a fish out of water and damaging the whole team or company.

Cases in point: video game company 3D Realms wasted twelve years and tens of millions of dollars on the sequel to their popular game Duke Nukem 3D before abandoning the effort.⁵ Similarly, LucasArts, a legendary gaming company that failed in April 2013, collapsed because of indecision and apathy at the highest levels.⁶ Somehow, the creators of Star Wars and Indiana Jones couldn’t be bothered to make any new games after having taken the industry by storm with these inventive new entries in the mid- to late 1980s.

Buckling Down

So what should you do when faced with an uncertain decision? Follow these tips so you’re covered as best you can be:

1 CONSIDER AS MANY OPTIONS AS POSSIBLE WITHOUT STALLING. Don’t leap before you look, but don’t spend forever looking, either. Moving quickly doesn’t mean making a knee-jerk decision. Gather relevant facts, ignore your ego, listen to advisers, consider the repercussions—then make the best move for your organization and team.

2 TAKE REASONABLE PRECAUTIONS. Hedge your bets before making your decision, just in case something unexpected happens. Even if you’re excited about a prospect, that’s no reason to forget about due diligence. A classic example: Time Warner’s acquisition of AOL in 2000. Time Warner Chairman Gerald Levin was so eager to make the deal that he didn’t put a standard contingency plan in place to back out or revisit the terms of the deal if AOL’s stock underperformed. AOL was vastly overvalued, so when the dot-com bubble burst and AOL’s stock dropped 50 percent overnight, Time Warner found itself $200 billion in the hole.⁷

3 DON’T HESITATE TO REVERSE DIRECTION. It makes no sense to keep digging a hole when you’ve obviously made the wrong decision. Abandoning a bad decision gives you room to make a better one. Back up, look over the situation, and try a different tack once you have enough information to proceed.

4 DON’T AUTOMATICALLY DISMISS NEW OPPORTUNITIES. Even if it seems too good to be true, investigate any intriguing opportunity to profit—and think twice about not pursuing it, no matter how logical your reasoning. For example, Kodak invented the digital camera in 1975, then suppressed its existence because the company didn’t want digital options to hurt its film sales.⁸ Later, it could have been named the official film of the 1984 Olympics, but gave up the opportunity to a brash new competitor, Fuji.⁹ At the time, Kodak controlled 90 percent of the photographic film market. In 2012, it went into Chapter 11.¹⁰

Take Charge

If you’re in command, be in command. Your superiors put you where you are so you could move your company forward. The only way to move forward? Make decisions. Lots of them. Constantly. If you make five wrong decisions, you’ve ruled out five things that won’t work. Remain flexible, and always be willing to try a new direction when something fails.

COLLABORATE AROUND DECISION-MAKING

You have a staff for a reason—to handle the pressure of everyday operations. Then you can handle the important things, including decisions that determine your team’s or organization’s direction. You can even have your people contribute their ideas and prove, by doing, what works and what doesn’t.

Sometimes this collaborative approach can result in work-place conflict. But friction isn’t always a bad thing, especially when you leverage it by giving everyone a voice in decision-making through healthy debate. This strengthens the team, allows constructive change, and short-circuits problems.

Healthy Disagreement

Many leaders consider conflict between employees to be a dangerous thing, and no wonder. No doubt you’ve seen the productivity-killing results of clashing personalities and company politics. Some managers go to great lengths to avoid conflict, but overcompensation devolves into complacency or, worse, groupthink—where everyone thinks alike and disagreement can’t be tolerated. “Yes men” have doomed more than one company.

Consider Blackberry. Once the fastest-growing company in the world, it has recently faded into near-obscurity. Rather than face the reality that consumer rather than business applications would drive smartphone sales, Blackberry execs turned their backs on consumers—and lost their market share to iPhones and Android devices.¹¹ Maybe a little dissension in the ranks would have done some good.

At flooring provider Shaw Industries, healthy debate is a normal part of the decision-making process. As Vice President of Marketing Brenda Knowles said in a recent interview,

We value diversity of backgrounds and thought, and seek that when putting together teams. That naturally brings with it differing opinions on how to approach something or what the root of any particular challenge may be. But that’s what we want. That deep respect for your colleagues invites healthy debate that will get us to the best answer. We aim to foster a culture of candor that is respectful yet provocative. We believe that healthy debate, or healthy conflict as we often reference it, has been a big part of our business success.

The Flip Side of Conflict

Conflict doesn’t have to stifle innovation or bring your workflow to a screeching halt. Dissension has its place within workplace discussions. If nothing else, it lets people blow off steam and feel more engaged—crucial factors in performance and productivity. Better yet, you may hear some innovative ideas with the potential to revitalize your business or fatten the bottom line.

Let’s look at the reasons to let team members clash at times:

• Conflict sparks healthy debate and competition. When people can argue about where they’re going, you avoid the blind agreement that characterizes groupthink. It also stirs up the team culture, especially when handled in a professional manner. If an idea looks like it won’t work, let debate sort it out—don’t just cut it down immediately. Some ideas need time to mature.

• Conflict gives everyone a voice in decision-making, making sure no one feels left out, thereby enhancing commitment and engagement. That’s an integral part of the CSS Farms management process, according to Vice President Steve Gangwish. “When people come to work in the morning and go home at night, they feel like it’s their deal, their farm.”

Giving everyone a voice also results in a better understanding of one’s teammates. When you air your differences, you learn why others think the way they do—and this might change your own mind. At the very least, the discussion provides new insight into another person’s approach and beliefs, even if you continue to disagree.

• Conflict allows constructive change.
Well-reasoned disagreement, especially when the dissenter stands by it, can result in improvement not only for one project but for subsequent ones as well. Have you ever seen the film 12 Angry Men, or read the play it’s based on? If one juror hadn’t stood by his beliefs and disproved the “evidence,” an innocent man might have been convicted. In challenging the status quo, the juror shattered long-held assumptions and personal agendas.

• Conflict short-circuits worse problems.
Rather than letting resentment fester into something truly dangerous, properly handled conflict allows individuals to resolve their differences before they explode.

A Delicate Equilibrium

When you work through conflict instead of suppressing or ignoring it, it strengthens the team—and a stronger team is more productive. Colorless groupthink serves you poorly in business, so within specific guidelines, allow your people some level of conflict. Careful handling of honest disagreements can inject a much-needed breath of fresh air into the workplace atmosphere.

EXECUTE DECISIONS AND MOVE FORWARD

Once you’ve made the decision, execute! When it comes to productivity and success, execution trumps all. No matter how well you’ve planned your strategy, nothing happens if you don’t get it done.

If your people are dragging their feet, shake them up a bit. As a leader, it’s your responsibility to elicit results. Depending on your style and your generation, you may interpret that to mean directly facilitating team progress without making friends—fast becoming an antiquated viewpoint—or chilling with your people over a beer every once in a while. In either scenario, the ability to make ideas happen means the difference between success and failure, so sometimes you have to set a hard line and be the boss. That means, among other things:

1 STOP ACCEPTING EXCUSES. If lack of training or equipment slows productivity, rectify the situation. If people still don’t produce, find out why and correct the issues in whatever way necessary.

2 SET STRICT DEADLINES. Make team goals clear, while setting drop-dead dates for producing what you and your superiors require. If necessary, create an action plan mapping the major deadlines along the way. Outline exactly how you’ll go about reaching those milestones, and then choose the clearest path that lets you leap straight into action.

3 DON’T OVERCOMPLICATE. All you need is a basic roadmap, so choose the easiest, cheapest way to execute the mission. Embrace flexibility so you can turn on a dime if the situation warrants. Avoid making success contingent on a particular step or item, or you may end up dead in the water; always leave room for a workaround.

4 HONE THEIR SKILLS. When it doesn’t interfere with productivity, send your team to training, even for skills they might not need right now but will in the future. Urge them to invest in continuing education to increase their personal ROIs. Many organizations will pay for it as long as employees maintain their quality of work.

5 HELP THEM STRUCTURE THEIR TIME. If a team member can’t get it together, intervene a bit more than usual on the scheduling. You can have low performers submit personal schedules for your approval and require activity reports if you can’t see results. If those steps don’t work, put them on a corrective action plan.

Get a Move On

Know this: you’ll never get as much information as you’d like before you start on a project. You’ll never be able to account for every contingency and detail. You’ll feel nervous when you make a decision, especially when you embark on something new. But don’t let any of that—or fear or procrastination or any other excuse—keep your team from moving forward. Other people depend on you to make a final decision, so they can move forward.

Taking action overcomes fear—and ideas are worthless until you take action. So once you have enough ducks in a row, get started and meet the challenge head-on. You can take care of the details as they arise. Stop dragging your heels and get to it, selecting the easiest, most direct path to success—exercising simplicity, careful direction, practicality, speed, and flexibility along the way.