Page 176 - Roy W. Rice - CEO Material How to Be a Leader in Any Organization-McGraw-Hill (2009)

You Are Decisive • 157

Do not dwell on or overexamine the 10,000 things that could enter
into the equation and that could affect the decision.
By speeding up a decision, you might take a process from a scien-
tist’s innovative dream to a product rolling off the factory line and onto
retailers’ shelves in six months versus two years, giving you a year and a
half head start over competitors.

You get known as a go-to-get-it-done person. Better to be an aim,
ready, fire person than an analysis/paralysis one.

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When making decisions, people bring out an endless list of overcon-
cerns about unintentional consequences: “If I seed the clouds, it will
rain, and it might flood the rivers, and the price of corn will go up.”
Fact is the river may flood anyway.

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I’m quick to make a decision, chose a course of action, and move for-
ward. I don’t have to review it 20 more times. Most people ponder
too much. I act, and I’ll make another decision later, if necessary.
Tell me, how much better can more information be if I’m delayed in
making the decision? Five weeks later at the deadline, people come
up with a decision. If they had made it five weeks earlier, they would
have had all that time to deal with the problem.

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Think long. Think again. Then decide. Be patient but hurry.
If you don’t a make a decision, you paralyze a whole bunch of people
around you. People are largely unwilling to make decisions. They are
open to new ideas when decisions are made for them—if they feel heard
in the process but want to play it safe by not actually making the deci-
sions themselves.
When you take a leap of faith and decide, you start in motion things
that you could never have seen before you made the decision. And, if nec-
essary, you can make another decision considering the new circumstances.
Meanwhile, if someone else makes a better decision, get behind it.