Preamble
Today more than ever good leaders are in demand. We need leaders who can bring their small business, non-profits, medium and large companies, churches, towns, and cities back from the brink of failure. Many organizations are dealing with crises on a daily basis, we like to say they are “building a new airplane, WHILE in flight.” Critical thinking and good decision making will assist leaders in minimizing catastrophic events that will further jeopardize the organization’s future.
“Everything is easy if you set the complex or challenging equal to null or zero….think about that…how many times have you been frustrated that critical data which is complex or challenging is left on the floor or hanging in the air, without action or further thought?” -Jerry “Indy” Gandy
The most critical function of a leader is to make decisions that motivate action and build trust within and outside their organization. We call that function “navigating the unknown.”
The Benefits of ACT
Here are some of the benefits of ACT we’ve experienced in our professional lives across multiple settings and industries:
- You think better, make better decisions and therefore
- You achieve better outcomes for your business.
- It helps achieve your growth goals because, it affects your planning, pursuit, marketing, contracts, negotiation, execution, and risk avoidance, moreover
- It helps you avoid the opportunity costs of addressing unnecessary risks you might incur by poor decision making throughout your organization.
- Over time, you also change your organization’s culture toward a trusting, transparent, great thinking one with confidence in the team’s future…one that consistently produces positive outcomes and thrives in the complex to gain early advantages and opportunities.
Therefore, developing these skills will help you
- to think creatively, solve problems systematically, and detects inconsistencies in reasoning;
- to develop emotional intelligence and self-awareness;
- It will sharpen your planning, issue identification and problem-solving skills for your clients and company;
- It also enables you to really understand how to respond to a mistake.
Leaders, at times — especially in times of crisis — may treat mistakes as a crime through the punishment or reaction they give decisions that lead to poor outcomes. This reaction at best teaches your workforce to avoid decisions or at worst leads to decision and action paralysis.
By embracing and learning to grow both your own and your organization’s ACT, you instill a learning culture that can also make decisions faster and better with agility to the ever-changing environment.
