Do you suck at decision making?
When it comes down to it, owning a business or performing as a manager means one thing — making a lot of decisions. If you’re in a leadership role, I’m thinking decisions might just be your primary work product — why you get paid. It’s why you make the big bucks and what you do countless times every day.
Well, what would happen if you started to track them more carefully? Did you ever count up the number of decisions you make in a day? What about keeping track of how many good, bad or so-so decisions you are responsible for? What if everybody who made decisions kept a running scorecard — kind of like a lifetime batting average of decision making. Would you be a superstar in the major leagues or a struggling rookie on the farm team?
How about committees and teams? Have you ever charged your group from the onset with instructions like, “You’re here to make eight decisions, and you have two hours to do it in”?
Most often, managers are measured by production quotas, sales goals or, ultimately, the bottom line on a monthly profit and loss statement. Sometimes though, it’s helpful to have a more frequent measure to track incremental progress each day. The challenge with managers is then what to measure — what are their output numbers? What ‘product’ does a manager ‘produce,’ if you will?
I’m suggesting that executive teams and managers could benefit from having measures on their performance, just like you expect from the folks who report to you. Imagine emerging from your leadership meetings and reporting to your troops, “We’ve made 17 decisions today and here they are…and our last month’s decision averages are in and your leadership team’s scorecard ranking is 87.” (Meaning you made 87 percent good decisions and a few that were duds.)
And what about your procrastination stats? How are they shaping up? Keeping a separate list of those pesky things that are hard to decide can be enlightening, too. As a matter of fact, if this list grows big, it could be the earliest indicator you’ll have on inefficiency or future doom.
I think it was Roosevelt who said, “In any moment of decision, the best thing you can do is the right thing, the next best thing is the wrong thing and the worst thing you can do is nothing.”
At the end of every discussion, of every report, of every agenda item, somewhere in the mix lies the next decision to be made. Think of your management team as a decision factory of sorts and M your meeting agendas around the ultimate decision to be made. Try starting every topic with, “We need to decide ___________.” And count them. Track the outcome, and then see if your good decision batting average correlates with bottomline results.
I’m thinking there’s a connection there. I’ve made a decision. I’ve decided to decide what I should do next. That’s one!
david@gwinnettmagazine.com
