Three Powerful Words to Drive Decision Velocity in any Organization!
How can you get the ‘Authority to Proceed’ without suffering endless delays?
Everyone has been in this situation. You have a tough problem. You’ve worked through all the options and selected the right course of action to recommend.
Of course, there is some risk, and you need to get leadership approval to proceed. Now, you’re into the waiting game. Arg!… waiting for someone with authority to approve the plan.
Well, wait no more.
What if you could assume the authority to proceed, without assuming the responsibility for approval? …Huh?!
Simple, just use these three words to preface your recommendation….
“… unless otherwise directed…”
This is how it works. In your communication with management:
“Here’s the situation. We evaluated these options and are recommending this approach, with the following rationale. So, unless otherwise directed, we plan to move forward with Option-A.”
No leader wants to be a bottleneck and it will be hard for leaders to say ‘stop’ unless they have a good reason. You have acknowledged their responsibility and have given them the opportunity to exercise their authority, which they are implicitly yielding…
