Leaders! Lend me your ears for a moment. This will be the critical leadership skill over the next several years. Are you ready? The skill is… Decision making. “Oh. That’s it?” I know. I can feel your eyes rolling. It’s not sexy like “strategic innovation, or “AI implementation.” It will be critical, though. Think of this skill not in the everyday sense, but in a refreshed sense. And, embarrassingly, the refreshed sense looks like this: consider alternatives, decide, execute on the decision, and keep going until it’s done or it proves to be a bad decision. I say “embarrassingly” because even though that is the basic model, it seems that decision making has started to look like this: consider alternatives, make a half-hearted decision, start executing on the decision, rethink the decision, talk to more people, try to execute on the other alternatives to cover your butt, change course mid-stream, get distracted, focus on a new initiative, half-finish the original decision, get frustrated, get redirected by the SVP of something, and retreat to email. I am I getting close to the decision making model in your organization? Well, you’re not alone. We are in the golden age of opportunity. In this age, the ability to decide is a key skill.
With your teams, don’t get out of the way, do this instead
"Get out of the way!" I often hear some version of this sentiment when talking about building a culture to incentivize high performance teams. "You have to find the right people, equip them, and then get out of the way." People who talk about getting out of the way...