Ensure you have the right decision making muscle in place
A great way to think about your business is it represents today the outcomes of all the decisions you've made up to this point. The greater the performance of your company, obviously you've made some great decisions. And now most importantly, the future valuation or future net worth of your company is reliant on the decisions you're making today and tomorrow so you want to continue to fine tune and sharpen your company decision making muscle. Here are a few steps you could consider taking now to help build this critical muscle in your company:
- Before focusing on making a decision, first ask yourself if you have the right people helping you make the decision. Too often ego drives decisions and leaders feel it will reflect poorly on them if they turn to others for insights before making a decision. The first step great leaders take in making a decision is asking themselves, am I the right person for making this decision and if so, who around me perhaps has experienced this issue before and I can quickly learn from them to avoid making mistakes they might have made?
- Learn to size up the magnitude of a decision and then assign appropriate time and energy to it. For those decisions that are not of great financial magnitude, low impact on customer experience and little or no impact on the future worth of your company, either delegate it or give it little time. But for those that are of higher magnitude, ensure you are giving it due attention it merits. Doing so can help you Bank Your Moment.
- Build the muscle of running certain decisions through models. Think about a decision in terms of running the potential impact through a model of your P&L and even your weekly cash flow projection tool. Doing so in my past helped me make a lot of important business decisions as the models helped me and my teams think through our various scenarios and the impact on our performance.
Great leaders know the power of great decision making and know the value of building the decision making muscle of their team. Sit with key members of your team and brainstorm the decision making model for your company. Even the smallest of improvements could build great future value and the net worth of your company.
