Welcome to Friday 411, issue #039. In 4 minutes, with 1 insight and 1 action, you’ll simplify your complex decisions.
1 Insight
Leaders are often required to make complex decisions. With an easy 3-step process, you can simplify your decision-making.
Inc. Magazine reported that the average person makes 35,000 decisions per day. But you’re not an average person. You’re a leader. That means that you make more decisions than most people, and your decisions are weightier. Directly and indirectly, your choices affect thousands of people, including employees, customers, and shareholders.
One bad decision can ruin lives. To avoid clamorous consequences, decision-making is one of the most important competencies that a leader can develop.
Decision-making was so important to Steve Jobs that he eliminated many unnecessary decisions from his life. He wore the same clothing every day. Additionally, he would eat the same lunch for weeks on end. These choices freed up space for greater creativity in decisions more crucial than which salad dressing to choose.
Most leaders (us included) won’t make Job’s level of commitment to free up mental space. (We like variety in our salad dressings.) Nevertheless, you can reduce the complexity of your decisions. Decisions become much easier when you take three steps.
- Determine the next action in your decision.
- Turn the action into a yes/no question.
- Decide if you want to take the next action.
Making One Decision Easier
Imagine you need to hire someone for a key position. You and your team feel pressured and overwhelmed, so you would like to hire as quickly as possible. You have several applicants you’re considering.
One candidate, Donna, has extensive experience in your industry. She’s already had a phone interview. The next step in the process is an in-person interview. You’re desperate, so your thoughts skip ahead. You realize she has valuable work experience. You begin asking yourself, “Should I hire Donna?”
That is too broad of a question for such an important and complex decision. When under pressure to speed up a decision, leaders often make the mistake of asking broad questions.
Instead, let’s follow the three steps in order.
- Determine the next action in your decision. The next action would be to contact Donna to set up an in-person interview.
- Turn the action into a yes/no question. Ask yourself, “Do I want to contact Donna to set up an in-person interview?”
- Decide if you want to take the next action. When you answer the question from step #2, you realize that you don’t want to set up an in-person interview with Donna. She was inexplicably late to the phone interview. You also had a few red flags about the validity of her work experience. You decide not to extend an in-person interview to her.
These three steps shrunk the decision from “Should I hire Donna?” to a simpler question: “Do I want to contact Donna to set up an in-person interview?”
This third step involves both logic and intuition. With logic, you can look at the facts to help you come to a conclusion (e.g. Donna was late to the initial interview and didn’t apologize). With intuition, you pay attention to your “gut” to help you come to conclusions (you had red flags about her work experience that you might not be able to explain).
Making Multiple Decisions Easier
Now, imagine that you have two other candidates: Gary and Cynthia. Rather than asking yourself the question, “Who do I need to hire?” use the three steps to shrink the decision for each candidate separately.
Gary:
- Determine the next action in your decision. You’ve reviewed Gary’s resumé, and it looks good. Your next step is to set up a phone interview with him.
- Turn the action into a yes/no question. You ask yourself, “Will I invite Gary to a phone interview?”
- Decide if you want to take the next action. You decide that you’re interested enough to invite him to a phone interview.
Cynthia
- Determine the next action in your decision. Cynthia has been through multiple interviews. The next step is to contact her references for feedback.
- Turn the action into a yes/no question. You ask yourself, “Will I contact Cynthia’s references to ask them questions?”
- Decide if you want to take the next action. You decide that you will contact them to get feedback.
For Donna, Gary, and Cynthia, you’ve taken a complex decision—who you should hire—and made it much simpler.
As a leader, you must develop the competence of making decisions. But complex decisions become easier with this 3-step process.
1 Action
What is a complex decision that you’re currently facing? Use these three steps to simplify the decision.
