By Rick Williams
As the leader, you are expected to make smart decisions for your company and your team – whatever organization you lead. You must demonstrate confidence and your mastery of the challenges you face.
When faced with a new challenge – an opportunity or threat – your first instinct is to respond quickly. Your hardwired first reaction expresses your preconceived ideas, personal experiences, assumptions, prejudices, and the limited facts on the table. Your quick response is typical human nature and usually seen as doing your job as the leader.
You might be wrong. My new book, Create the Future, encourages you to give yourself time to get it right when you must make an important decision. Be open to ideas and points of view different than your own. Be sure you fully understand the challenge and the options you have.
When you first face a new challenge, you will only know some of the relevant information, and you will not fully understand the conflicting issues. You will not have the full range of possible options for addressing the challenge before you or fully understand the implications and risks of the options you are considering.
The combination of your experience, judgment, and expertise may make you uniquely qualified to decide the questions before you. Even when you are the best person to decide, and you take a moment to think about how to respond, your first response may be wrong and will most likely not be the best response you could make.
Empower yourself as a leader by first managing the moment and then managing your decision-making process for making the final choices. What must be decided at that moment to limit damages or preserve options? What decisions must be made NOW? Then, define the steps you and others will take leading to when you or your leadership team will choose the best possible response to the opportunity or the threat.
Even when you must decide quickly, manage your own decision-making process. Find a trusted colleague to talk to about what you are considering. Walk around for a moment. Take a deep breath. Give yourself a moment to calm down and be sure whatever you decide is an expression of who you want to be as a person and the leader you want to be for your organization.
When you are past the moment of crisis, if there is one, outline what you and others will do to design the best response to the challenge before you. You could be the final decision-maker or a board of directors or Executive Committee could be the decision-maker. My recommendation is that you take yourself and other decision-makers through the five steps leading to quality decisions: Define the Challenge; Imagine Success; Create Options; Evaluate Barriers; and Choose the Future. Where possible, engage with other trusted advisors and leadership team members. Do whiteboard exercises to get lots of ideas and options into the discussion.
At each step in the process, ask questions. Asking questions is the path to discovery and learning. Use the Ask, Discover, Learn, and Decide decision-making process. Give permission to be open and candid. Encourage creativity. Open yourself to hearing other points of view. Learn from the experiences of others in similar circumstances.
Separate the Advising/Consulting process from the Deciding process. They are two different mindsets. Encourage “all ideas are good ideas,” respect for every contribution, and creativity during the Advising work. Disciplined reality, understanding your values and risk preferences, and a determination to choose are central to the decision-making process.
Even when you are certain you know the right way to go – the right choice to make – pause and allow for the possibility that you do not know all the facts, issues, options, risks, and implications of the choices you are considering. Being open to other ideas will make you a stronger leader. Your decisions will come closer to achieving your goals, matching your risk preferences, and expressing your values.
Your job as the leader is to manage the decision-making process as well as make decisions. At the core, your job is to manage your own decision-making. Give yourself the time and space to make the best decisions possible.
Rick Williams, author of CREATE THE FUTURE: Powerful Decision-Making Tools For Your Company And Yourself, is an internationally published author. He is a frequent speaker and writer on best practices for leadership and decision-making. Williams began his career as a physicist developing space- and defense-related systems. After Harvard Business School, Williams joined the global consulting firm Arthur D. Little, Inc., where he worked on business strategy and acquisitions and the economic and strategic impact of government policy and regulations on a broad spectrum of industries. He then founded and served as CEO of The Equity Company, an award-winning real estate investment and development firm. Williams’ recent work includes serving on the board of directors of technology companies. He has served as board chairman of a medical device company and a bank/venture capital firm. He has also served on the national board for the Private Directors Association and as president of the Harvard Business School Association of Boston and other non-profit boards. Williams is an honors physics graduate of the University of Pennsylvania, a winning sailboat racer, and an avid photographer.
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