An unusual thing happened today. A local businessman wrote me and said he was collecting "words of wisdom" and asked if I would contribute a quick sound bite on something useful to know, follow, or do in business.
A thousand thoughts swirled around in my brain, each swimming to the surface only to be discarded as trite, obvious, overused, or too specific to be applied as a generic tip.
And then I remembered a favorite quote from some book I read as an adolescent… "The mark of a great leader is the ability to make fast decisions. If they later turn out to be right, so much the better."
I remembered that as coming from a Robert Heinlein novel. He loved tossing out pithy aphorisms of that sort. But I can't find any such quote in my Google searching and nothing even reasonably close from Heinlein. The best matches I came up with were both from military commanders:
"When a decision has to be made, make it. There is no totally right time for anything."
--General George Patton
"Nothing is more difficult, and therefore more precious, than to be able to decide."
--Napoleon Bonaparte
No matter the attribution, there is a great underlying truth to be found in the concept. In business, the vast majority of people don't want to make a decision. Making a decision makes us feel vulnerable. "What if things don't turn out well and I get blamed for the outcome?" So people solicit group discussion, tossing around the possibilities and delaying making a decision until backed into some kind of deadline-induced grudging consensus.
I run into it with my enterprise webinar clients all the time. I ask something like: "Do you want to add an audience poll?" or "Do you want to hold questions to the end or take breaks along the way for questions?" Instead of a simple answer, it turns into a ten-minute discussion group topic, wasting a lot of valuable employee time.
The one that really makes me shake my head is when I am moderating a webinar and ask a presenter "Would you like me to refer to you as Robert, Bob, or Mr. Smith?" They hem and haw and finally say "I guess it doesn't matter… Whatever you like." Every presenter should have the answer to this question ready for immediate use. Pick one. If it doesn't matter, then get the question off the table so you can move on to something worthy of your time and attention.
Of course many (if not most) business decisions have greater importance, subtlety and impact than those trivial examples. But even in these cases, the thing that separates leaders from followers is the willingness to make a choice. That doesn't mean "act rashly" or "ignore facts." It simply means that after taking note of available information and considering possibilities, you need to choose one of your options. Do it. Of course you don't know whether it is the right decision at the time… If you knew that, there wouldn't be a need for a decision!
"But what if it turns out badly?" I hear you cry. Then you will have gained new information, insight, and data you didn't have earlier. So you use that to make a new decision. You can't change the past. All you can do is incorporate the latest and best information to make new decisions. This is an ongoing process. Sometimes the new information you get is that following the previous course of action produced bad results. Okay, now you know that and are ready to make a new decision (Not a "different" decision… A "new" decision. That's an important distinction.).
So that's my word of business wisdom for the day. Take a chance. Separate yourself from the safety of the pack. Make a decision when it needs to be made. If it turns out to be right, so much the better!
