Member-only story
4 Things Every Leader Should Know About Making Decisions (But Most Don’t)
A leader’s primary responsibility is to make tough decisions. If the issues are unimportant and the choices are clear, someone lower down in the organization usually deals with it. The stuff that comes to you is mostly what others are unable, or unwilling, to decide themselves. That leaves you with the close calls.
All too often, we buy into the Hollywood version of leadership in which everything boils down to a single moment when the chips are down. That’s when the hero of the story has a moment of epiphany, makes a decision and sets things going in a completely new direction. Everyone is dazzled by the sudden stroke of genius.
In real life, it’s rare that things boil down to a single moment. It’s more of a continuum. In fact, the most consequential decisions you make often don’t seem that important at the time and ones that seemed pivotal can turn out to be trivial. What is true, however, is that the decisions you make will define you as a leader. You need to learn to make them wisely.
1. Your Job Is To Make Tough Decisions, With Incomplete Information, In A Compressed Time Frame
Some years ago, a young woman who worked for me went to run the digital division of another company…
