DECISIONS ARE YOUR PRODUCT
The quality of your life is determined by the quality of decisions that you make. The average individual makes 35,000 decisions a day. As a leader, you can make major changes in your organization by focusing on making quality decisions that propel your business forward. After all, as a leader, decisions are your product. This week, Hallie and I discuss how to best set yourself up to make quality decisions by first becoming clear on your set of principles. We give you two examples of how this concept works in the business world, one from Ray Dalio and the other from Jeff Bezos, so you can create a framework of your own. We talk about overcoming decision fatigue, how to specify who will take ownership of making and implementing decisions, and how Force Multipliers can set their executive up for success.
LEADERSHIP & DECISION MAKING MODELS
Many successful leaders have written about their processes for making decisions for their businesses. Here are a few book recommendations we mentioned in this episode:
- Invent & Wander by Jeff Bezos
- Bet on Yourself by Ann Hiatt
- Thinking in Bets by Annie Duke
- Principles by Ray Dalio
- The Founder & The Force Multiplier by Adam Hergenrother and Hallie Warner
Plus, here are some other resources Hallie mentions:
- Business Meets Spirituality episode about principles
- 10 Questions to Help Your Leader Prioritize
- 11 Books for Executive Assistants & Aspiring Chiefs of Staff
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Timestamps for our business decisions episode:
[1:36] The entire purpose of being a leader or the CEO of your life is to make quality decisions for your life and your business.
[2:14] How do we put ourselves in a position to make the best quality decision for our organization and our life?
[5:55] What is a manifesto? It is a written statement that publicly declares the intentions, motives, or views of the issuer. Here, we explain why it’s important to write a statement of your principles.
[6:15] We share Ray Dalio’s life principles here through Principles of Success. Go here to listen to our in-depth episode about creating your principles:
- Pain plus reflection equals progress.
- Meaningful work and meaningful relationships are the greatest assets and the greatest rewards.
- Don’t let your ego and blind spots stand in your way.
- Own your own outcomes.
- Be radically truthful and radically transparent in what you do.
- Make your work and your passion one and the same, and do it with people you want to be with.
- Understand that people are wired very differently.
- Evolve or die.
- You can get universally anything you want, but not everything you want, so prioritize.
[8:45] Most of us say yes to too many things, and this dilutes our focus and cognitive energy, preventing us from actually really getting good at certain things.
[10:07] Eleven Principles from Jeff Bezos:
- Use the regret minimization framework.
- Find the right opportunity.
- Be customer-obsessed.
- Make your value exceed all the costs, constantly.
- Fear customers, not competitors.
- Focus on the long-term.
- Feed the flywheel.
- Hire for intensity.
- Protect your culture at all costs.
- Know what kind of decision you are making.
- Listen to your critics, but not too much.
[15:18] Resulting is the thought process where we are evaluating the quality of decisions based on the outcome that they achieve. As a force multiplier, that’s why it’s important to be that safety net before your executive. Hallie talks about getting the initial framework of the outcome that your executive desires.
[22:05] Colin Powell’s 40‒70 rule is every time you face a tough decision you should have no less than 40% and no more than 70% of the information you need to make the decision.
[24:08] It’s always important to know who owns the decision. If you don’t know who those people are, go back through your leadership team and your departments, or even just with yourself and your executive to figure out who actually owns the decision.
[26:57] The quality of your life is determined by the quality of decisions that you make. In a decision-making framework it is so important to start the conversation off to center yourself and get clarity on what decision you actually have to make, and how you are making it.
[28:37] What are some ways a Force Multiplier can have a major impact, when the executive is making a decision on behalf of the team? How can they share the information in a way that is timely and supportive?
