Is a wrong decision, often better than no decision at all?

decision making

According to the HBR magazine yes it is. “High-Preforming CEOs understand that a wrong decision is often better than no decision at all. ” Study of executives show that 6% received low score because they made wrong decisions. And 94% received low scores because they made too little or too late decisions.

Jerry Bowe, CEO of the private-label manufacturer Vi-Jo is an example of a decisive CEO who doesn’t wait for a perfect time to make his decisions. According to the article in HBR he makes his decisions when he has 65% certainty about the answer. When making decisions he asks these two questions from himself: “What is the impact if I get it wrong? And, how much will it hold other things up if I don’t move on this?”

This is a great approach for everyone who is involved in decision making in some sorts. You can also use this approach for making decisions in your life and finally start on tasks that are waiting so long to be done just because you are waiting for a perfect time to make the decision about them.

Of course waiting to receive information that can make your decision making more precise is valuable as well. But you need to know how much you can wait or how harmful making or not making a decision can be according to your situation. But Learning from decisive CEOs once you have some certainty, it is much better to make a decision to make things move on rather than keep everything wait.

There are definitely many decisions in my in my life that I have to make and I am not 100% certain about the answers.  Now that I am thinking, there are decisions that are 5 or 7 years old and I didn’t do anything about them just because I wasn’t 100% sure about what would happen after. I think it is time to move and make the decisions and act like a decisive CEO who prefers to move, make things go, learn from mistakes, and make things happen.

Here are 4 behaviors of successful leaders according t the HBR:

1) Deciding with Speed and Conviction

The highest IQ executives sometimes struggle the most with decisiveness. “While the quality of their decisions is often good, because of their pursuit of the perfect answer, they can make too long to make choices or set clear priorities – and their teams pay a high price. These smart but slow decision makers become bottlenecks”

2) Engage for impact

Successful CEOs know that they should address stakeholders need. They know how to engage people and get team and stakeholders to buy-in.

3) Adopting Proactively

CEOs are consistently facing different situations. They have to excel at adopting. In fact those that adopt are 6.7 times more likely to succeed.

4) Delivering Reliably

Successful CEOs consistently follow through on their commitments. “A key practice here is setting realistic expectations up front.”

 

 

 

 

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