Decisions come at leaders fast and furious. Many leaders are responsible for 10s, 100s or 1,000s of staff. It’s rare that a black-and-white-absolute issue crosses a leader’s desk. After an initial assessment, becoming hypnotized by the complexity of it all is an understandable response while leaders puzzle it all out.
However, what becomes clear to those who have spent time in leadership positions, says Terry Davis, President and CEO of Our Lady of the Wayside, is that the goal was never making decisions.
“Experience and knowledge are some of the highest valued currencies in any industry because they’re evidence that all the heavy lifts, mistakes and personal bests you’ve racked up eventually turn into bottom-line results,” Davis says. “A career of honest-to-goodness sweat equity has led you and your team through a series of decisions, ultimately resulting in informed solutions.”
Informed solutions are big, paradigm-shifting deals that require thoughtful foresight, meticulous planning, countless decisions, and often more than a few hours of lost sleep.
Smart Business spoke with Davis about the process of decision making as well as how to maintain perspective when making major organizational choices.
What does the decision-making process look like for those in leadership positions?
The decision-making process is highlighted by the following:
- Interpreting the landscape: Organizational priorities push leaders while resource management pulls. Once the correct solution is determined, the noise of everything competing for a leader’s attention suddenly quiets as they’re catapulted 30,000 feet above the melee. At this point, they either see the entire board or know the best questions to ask to get the full picture. This is the stage where leaders understand what can be done within the parameters available.
- Forecasting variables: Leaders are well-versed in the fact that change is imminent in any process, which can introduce endless combinations of complication and frustration. This is rarely anyone’s favorite thing, but ducking only multiplies it. Things really change once business leaders lean into the concept that they’re not just going to experience change, but they’re going to expect it, navigate it, and be the boss of it. Organizationally, look at it as a muscle that gets built that simultaneously promotes experience and knowledge.
- Making the game plan: Often the best solutions are based on reasoning, not just because that’s a style of leadership many value, but because that’s what best serves the business. Certainly, the role of executive comes with a certain degree of authority. But when focused on reaching to create solutions, reasoning enables leaders to teach through transparency, model accountability, and call plays that the entire team can get behind.
What should business leaders keep in mind as they face difficult decisions?
At this level of play, leaders get to decide. Before people take on leadership roles, that’s often all they wanted. Once they become leaders, they need to recognize that good decisions are the bedrock for good solutions.
Leaders make all kinds of decisions, some of which are life and death, and all of which are for people other than themselves. There’s a specific kind of responsibility that comes with making decisions for other people. Those decisions deserve more than one-dimensional thinking, and the ‘how’ and ‘why’ of them need to be able to be fully explained.
Those tough decisions you’re making not only mean you’re creating informed solutions, they mean you’re digging deeper. They mean you’re leading. ●
INSIGHTS Thought Leadership is brought to you by Our Lady of the Wayside.
