What are the daily habits that lead to better long-term decisions?
One of the challenges about being an executive is that you don’t get immediate feedback. It’s not like engineering where you can make a code change, deploy and immediately test to see what result you get. You may not see the results from a decision you make as an executive for months if not years.
So how do you know what to do day-to-day without that immediate feedback? You invest in habits that generally lead to good outcomes:
— Take care of yourself. You will make worse decisions when you are tired, hungry, or stressed as opposed to when your body and mind are operating at peak capacity.
— Slow down and listen. You don’t know it all. If people are bringing something to you, it matters to them, and they will trust you more when they feel that you have heard them and understand their pain. You can’t rush trust, so invest the time to really understand what they care about.
— Say the hard thing. You can’t make good decisions unless you talk about the difficult issues. You may be afraid to hear what people will say if you bring up a hard topic, and it may lead to arguments and hurt feelings. And yet, not talking about it is worse, because then you and the team are not making decisions from the same reality and the same context. “What have you been thinking but not saying?” is a question I use to help bring thoughts and words into congruence.
— Focus on the process. How are you making decisions? Who are you including in the discussion? How are you checking that you’re not missing critical perspectives? Have you considered doing a “premortem” to imagine what can go wrong?
These habits are like investing – while some people advertise get rich quick schemes that sometimes work, the most reliable form of investing is compound interest: save a little bit each month, and be patient. If you consistently stop to listen and have the difficult conversation, it may feel slower in the moment, but will lead to faster execution due to better alignment later.
What helps you make better decisions?