We all like an easy life, but there are some things in life that you just have to take seriously, particularly if you want to build a successful business. Decision making is one of those things.
Making decisions is the most important job of any business owner. It’s also the toughest and the riskiest. Bad decisions can and do damage a business, sometimes irreparably. So where do bad decisions come from? In many cases, they can be traced back to the way the decisions were made—the alternatives were not clearly defined, the right information was not collected, the costs and benefits were not accurately weighed. Other times they can come from a lazy decision-making process.
Recently several instances of lazy decision making have come to mind that I thought I’d share with you. The first one that I became aware of was, following on from the coronavirus pandemic in the UK, the government’s decision to reopen certain types of establishments and not others.
For example, allowing hairdressers to reopen, yet insist beauty parlor’s remain closed makes no sense. In both cases, there is close physical contact between the operator and the customer. Surely the best way would be to establish standards and require those standards to be maintained whatever the type of establishment. However, this requires considerably more work than using a carte blanche decision to define certain types of establishments as riskier than others.
Another case of lazy decision making I witnessed was the local authorities decision to rule that only vehicles of a certain age can be used for Taxis. Why is this lazy decision making you ask? Well just because a vehicle is of a certain age is no guarantee of its roadworthiness, it’s cleanliness, or passenger comfort. All it means is that the vehicle is less than ‘X’ years old.
In both these cases, the outcomes that the decision-makers were looking for is not consistent with the processes they used. In the first example, it’s just as likely that the virus could be transmitted in a poorly managed hairdressing establishment as a beauty parlor and in the second case passenger safety and comfort could be compromised in a poorly maintained newer vehicle as easily as an older vehicle. In both cases, the decisions were poorly framed, due to lazy processes.
These problematic lazy decision-making processes are not just limited to the public sector (although examples are easier to come across in the public sector) but exist in all walks of life and business. The thing is decision making is rarely studied and thought about. Yet you and your business are the composite of all the decisions you’ve made.
People think about the ‘why’ of decisions, i.e why am I making this decision and what are the outcomes I’m looking for, yet they very rarely think about the ‘how’ of the decision-making process. How am I going to make this decision?
If you understand the ‘how’ of your decision-making process then it’s easier to develop a system that will increase the probability of successful decisions. If you don’t have a consistent process or system for making decisions then, you may make a decision which has good outcomes the first time but because your process is not consistent then the next time you come to make this same decision you’re not guaranteed to get the same positive outcome.
I’ve written extensively about how to create a decision-making process (click here to read one of my blogs on this) and have included decision making as part of my next level business coaching course (you can find out about that here). I consider decision making as a vital skill for business owners. The problem is that it is teachable but rarely taught.
One of the ways that you can start to work on your decision-making skills is to take my decision-making audit. It should only take you a few minutes to take and will send you a report once completed. (Click here to take the audit).
Of course one of the advantages of working with a good business mentor is that they should have the necessary processes in place to assist you with your decision making. Find out more about my mentoring service here.
Twelve intensive half-day meetings.
