Worse than Bad Decisions

What's worse than making a bad decision? Not making a decision at all. If you are in a leadership position, you are often confronted with situations that require decisions you are not completely comfortable with. If that is the case, you have several options:

1.) You can ask your people to get more data before you make a decision
2.) You can show confidence in your people and make a decision based on their recommendations
3.) You can make a decision based on your own experience and best judgment
4.) You can make no decisions and give no guidance

The first three are all viable ways of dealing with the situation. They keep your team actively engaged with the situation and provide a level of guidance. If you ask for more information, however, you cannot use that as a way of delaying the decision indefinitely. If the team is not giving you the information you feel you need, tell them specifically and let them know you will act on what they come back with. You may rule against them, but at least you are not just stringing them along.

The worst thing you can do is not make a decision and give no guidance. Too often in corporate environments today, executives are more afraid of making a wrong decision than of actually leading their people. Tom Peters had a great posting on his blog several months ago about the things that made Admiral Lord Nelson such an effective military leader. One of them was his belief in winning over the other admiral's concern over "not losing." If you're more concerned about "not losing" than winning, chances are your people have become dis-engaged employees and you are an ineffective leader.

Lack of engagement is one of the biggest problems in corporate America today. It costs companies billions of dollars and drags down organizations. Leadership, true, honest and dedicated leadership can help keep employees engaged and drive organizational success. Are you leading your organization or are you simple managing it into oblivion because you are more afraid of "not winning" than of at least making a decision?

Even if you make a bad decision, you can still keep your organization engaged and assuming it is based on relatively good information it should still get your people moving in approximately the right direction. You can always alter the plan as it evolves.

Finally, if you're afraid that making a decision will lose you your job, QUIT! All you're going to do is drag down your organization and you obviously do not have the confidence or your superiors. That lack of confidence is usually quite obvious to everyone and will just lead to your being sent away in the end.