Decision-making as a CEO - are you the bottleneck?

What do you think is the main job of a CEO?
In fact, I could ask this question for anyone in a leadership position.

I know that’s a tough question because the answer is probably… It depends.

But if you had to step back and consider a theme that brings all the things together for a CEO or leader, I’d say that the main job of the CEO is to make decisions. It’s the basis for all the other activities.

There are decisions about the direction the business should go – what’s next?
AND decisions about how to plan and implement the plan,
AND decisions about who should be involved in the team and execution of projects.

There are decisions about what to say and what not to say to your team, your Board, your clients, your spouse.

There are decisions about who to recruit and who to let go.

Decisions about how to approach situations, events, challenges and what to do about them.

I’d venture to say that almost everything that passes the CEO’s desk leads to a decision that needs to be made by said CEO and then an action that needs to be taken from there.

That’s a lot of pressure. It’s time-consuming and this is where a bottleneck often gets created.

Some decisions are easy to make because you have the information you need. But most of the time there isn’t enough information and then the decision becomes way harder.

It’s often impossible to have perfect and complete information at any given time to make a decision. There are always gaps. There are always unknowns.

So how to do this?

Some leaders look to gather as much information as possible before they make a decision and we know that it only creates delays. We know that this leads to no action, otherwise known as analysis paralysis. Through the gathering of data, you increase your analysis and every new piece of information is more confusing so that you find yourself paralysed, unable to decide. Sound familiar?

The drive for more information consumes our attention and can lead to confusion, thereby stopping us from making a decision, taking action, and moving forward. This is a fantastic method of procrastination in making a decision. You stop yourself from moving ahead because you’re still doing the “research.” However, there comes a point, when you need to go with what you’ve got and make a decision, even if you’re unsure.

Now, I’m definitely not saying, just shoot from the hip and go with a decision based on no information. Not at all. I am saying to be aware of the other extreme, where we hold on to the belief of needing perfect information before making a decision.

All too often, I’ve seen how the CEO is the bottleneck of the business precisely because of this decision-making strategy.

It will do you good to remember that decisions take courage and trust.

Courage to make a mistake and know that you can fix it later. Trust in yourself, your team, your experience, your knowledge and your wisdom to take a stand even when you’re not 100% sure.

Courage to back yourself and trust your team to sometimes hand over decision making and keep moving forward.

Courage to take a step forward and trust that you can make adjustments along the way.

Sometimes it’s easier to let things sit and hope that if we ignore a situation, it will get better.

Where I’ve seen this happen often is with difficult conversations with team members about poor performance, the difficult decision to let a team member go because they are not performing (after repeated feedback and attempts to rectify the situation). It’s easier to keep the status quo and hope for improvement. Unfortunately, this doesn’t happen. Things often don’t improve without us taking that hard decision and acting on it.

So what’s a decision that’s been sitting on your desk for a while that you haven’t taken action on because you don’t have all the information yet?
Where have you been letting the status quo just hang in the balance?

Click here, let’s talk about it.