#3 Making Decisions - The What

I was reading an article from Booz&Co from 2013 called Leading with Intellectual Integrity and a statement stood out as it affirms my current blog series. With this blog, I want to help leaders not only know the "whats;" it also provides some insights regarding the "hows."

The sentence from the article reads, "We found that business literature contains a great deal of advice for chief executives about strategy and execution, but much less is written about how to become the kind of person who can bring the right judgement to bear on business decisions, especially when facing a disruptive environment."

The article goes on to say that it is difficult at best to try and glean the characteristics that delineate a poor leader from a great leader. This leads to the premise for the article in that the best place to start would be with intellectual integrity. The article defines "Intellectual Integrity" as exhibiting discipline, clarity, and consistency so that all of one's decisions fit together and reinforce one another.

Based on my experience, the best leaders follow a consistent method for decision making. I have put my faith in the center of my decisions and it has served me. Because the teams who work for me understand my decision making process, they understand the focus and priorities for their efforts.  Working from home is a request that requires a decision.  My management team knows that when they ask me to work from home I ask two questions.  Can your priority activities for the day be done from home and what are they? What can I expect to be done tomorrow when you return to the office?  Because they know my criteria, as soon as they ask permission, they supply the answers without a prompt.  

It is not easy to determine and define your internal decision making process so you are consistent and measurable.  Be aware, you will need to tweak the your decision making process as you learn and grow in your roles within an organization.  I will also tell you from experience that it is absolutely critical to learn how your decision making process fits within the company's organizational culture where you work.

Many leaders are "wishy washy" in their decision making. The simplest example is looking at a restaurant menu and being paralyzed by the choice.  Rather than ask everyone at the table for input, consulting the waiter, and changing the order after it's placed, the effective leader examines the choices, considers her appetite and budget, then makes the decision. At the dinner table, indecision simply wastes time. In the business world, knowing how to make effective decisions can make or break a career.  You need to know the criteria for making decisions.

In the next blog in this series, we'll look at some of the "hows" for making decisions, and provide examples of great - and not so great - decisions.  You will be able to choose some of these ideas for your own tool box.