What: Every leader is required to make decisions that move their team from where they are now to a future point. This episode shows you how to approach making any decision.

Why: As a leader who’s had to make many decisions, there often is a conflict between making a decision quickly and making a decision that has the best possible outcome. Put differently, you often need to decide if you want to be first, or do you want to be the best?  This applies to decisions made in business, relationships, school, and even in your personal life. 80% of the time, you will not be able to make a decision that is both fast AND the best (which would be the ideal scenario, and every leader should be actively growing to improve this area). As a leader, you need to make a decision that will provide the most benefit to moving your team forward, and leaders must learn to distinguish and prioritize their decision as needing to be first, or needing to be the best.

Breakdown: What does it mean to focus on being “first” or being the “best”

First - There are many decisions where the primary benefit is just to get something moving. Your solution or course of action does not have to be perfect, in fact, it will likely be altered as you go along. Your primary focus in making a “first” decision is to get an action plan out quickly and get the ball rolling. In these types of situations, there usually is an opportunity that will only be available for a short period of time, or a project that just needs to get started to meet the deadline. Leaders who are decisive thrive here because they don’t need a perfect solution, they just need action.

Best - There are situations where your plan must be the best, and so your priority and focus must be primarily on developing the best possible solution.  In these types of situations, you typically only have 1 chance to get it right, so it needs to be perfect, otherwise you will fail. As a leader, your focus is on gathering information and resources to draw up the best plan, no matter how long it might take. Leaders who have to be perfect thrive in this area because they need a perfect plan more than they need fast action.

Tie Up: As a decision maker, the ideal scenario is for a leader to develop the best solution in as short amount of time as possible. Often times, however, that is not realistic, especially as we are growing as a leader. Learning to categorize each decision as needing to be “first” or the “best” will help you place the right priority and effort to achieve the best outcome.

Application: To become a better decision maker, use what we’ve talked about previously as a lens to view every decision.  Here are some specific questions you can ask:

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   What is my deadline? Every decision process should start by setting a time in which you must commit to a course of action.

   
   
   
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   How easily can I adjust my future course of action? This question speaks to the degree of quality you need in your decision. Do you only get one chance at this and need to have the best plan? Or can you adjust on the way?

   
   
   
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   What happens if I do nothing? This is a really great question to ask because often times leaders feel like the have to make a decision right now, when that isn’t the case. Understand what you might be losing (if anything) by not acting quickly. What would you gain?

   
   
   
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   Am I really going to be able to get resources to make a better decision? No one can see the future, so we will never exactly know the outcome of a plan or solution, so don’t trick yourself into thinking that you will be able to know everything if you spend more time researching or thinking. Take an honest assessment of your situation and evaluate if there is realistically more information you could obtain to make a better decision.