I used to be indecisive, now I’m not so sure.
– W. C. Fields
Are you good at making good decisions?
Maybe you drag your feet a bit, getting stuck in data gathering and analysis mode. Or maybe you’re like me, shooting from the hip and praying for a Hail Mary when there’s too much going on. Neither approach is great.
As mid-level and functional leaders, we’re so crunched for time and being pulled in a million different directions, it’s hard to know where to even begin. When the stakes are high and there’s lots of uncertainty, decision-making is overwhelming, even scary. But fear not! There are good tactics and processes we can use to make high-quality decisions with confidence.
Making Mental Space
Clearing the mental clutter is half the battle. Every day, we’re confronted with tons of tiny decisions that take up our precious brain space. How much does it really matter if I get the light, medium, or dark roast in the small, medium, or large size? Yet, I can stand there at the counter hemming and hawing for eons. Know the difference between low and high stakes decisions and try not to sweat the small stuff.
“If I make, like, three good decisions a day, that’s enough. And they should be as high quality as I can make them.”
– Jeff Bezos
If you think a decision is important, you might still be able to carve out some much-needed mental space by asking:
- Do I have to make this decision, or is this something I might delegate? Being the leader doesn’t mean you have to have all the answers. Ask yourself if this decision is better made by a team member or colleague. Through delegating the decision, you can empower a direct report or a colleagues’ professional growth. That way, you can free up your time and energy to focus on what you do best and what your role demands. I found this podcast on how to delegate (starring Cisco’s Hassan Osman) to be super helpful. Enjoy!
- If I don’t decide today, might it go away? What if you just sat on it for a while? Believe it or not, sometimes the problem just magically goes away. This video with Dave Ramsey has some more tips on how to not decide.
- Can the group decide? Maybe it’s better not to bear the burden of the decision upon your lonely shoulders. You’ve probably seen this yourself – group decisions take more time but generally get better results and generate buy-in. Ask the team (or form a group) to share the decision-making process.
Admit Your Blind Spots
When I first saw this picture, I was 100% certain it was an old woman in profile, with a protruding chin and nose.
And that’s what the drawing is. But it’s also a drawing of a young woman, turned away, sporting a lovely necklace. Even after a friend showed me the lines intersecting to form the neck, nose, eyelash, I still can’t see the young woman in the picture.
We see with our unique frames — mental constructs simplifying complexity — that come from our experiences, values, and cultures. Frames may look like “reality”, but they filter what we see. And once you see something a certain way, it’s tough to see it differently.
If we don’t recognize them, our frames create problems. They lead us to make snap judgments and gather evidence to support our biased views. Or they lead us to define a complex challenge too narrowly, so we end up solving the wrong problem, overlooking potential solutions, or jumping to bad conclusions.
Denying our frames can lead to overconfidence; we think we know it all! Good decision-making requires understanding our frames and knowing the limits of our knowledge: what we know, what others know that we don’t, and what no one can know. This means admitting the level of uncertainty we’re dealing with and preparing to be wrong, which we’ll get to in the next blog post.
Stay tuned for Part 2, where we’ll talk about falling in love with the problem, assessing and testing options, and preparing to fail. Send me your questions on decision-making at jess.mcglyn@catalynics.com.
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