Thursday, September 17, 2009
Just Make a Decision
I read somewhere that great leaders make decisions when they have 60% of the information.
Any more information, and you’ve waited too long.
Any less information, and you haven’t taken enough time to do your homework to make a good decision.
My best advice for new managers: Just do something.
Don’t get analysis paralysis, just make a decision.
Then make another one.
And another one.
It doesn’t have to be a decision about the problem you’re working on.
It just needs to be a decision.
Get used to making decisions now, and the harder ones will be easier in the future.
Example: I have 10 people on my team. I occasionally buy them lunch for a job well done, because we’re short staffed, whatever. The question comes up: Should I buy the team Chinese or pizza for lunch? I send out an e-mail to the team, and 7 people respond: 5 with Chinese and 2 for pizza, and to get the food delivered by noon, I have to place my order in 5 minutes.
What do I do?
I order Chinese, and let everyone know we’ll get pizza next time (if that’s what they want). Nobody’s hurt, and it’s good practice in decision making. Is it the right decision?
Does it really matter?
Free food is free food, and getting food when folks are HUNGRY is more important than getting folks the right food. Sure, if I had any dietary restrictions on my team I might behave differently, but they don’t, so I just make a decision.
When I started managing, I worried a lot about making everyone happy, so I’d wait on a decision. I’d wait for everyone to weigh in before making a decision.
And it crippled my team and me. We’d wait until we had more information, and people would be upset because we didn’t share what we thought the problem was. My manager would be annoyed because I didn’t share what we found, and we couldn’t move into action to fix things sooner.
Making the little decisions about silly things like lunch have helped me gain the confidence to make the bigger decisions about hirings and firings, about what to do about emergencies, about a lot of things.
Now, I wait for 60% of the information and then I make a decision.
That’s my encouragement to you!
Just make a decision.
Source: http://www.bizzia.com/slackermanager/just-make-a-decision/
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