How to make 1247 decisions a day
I frequently encourage my team to make decisions with this thought in mind:
“What would Phil do?”
This is not to suggest I am infallible. Nothing could be further from the truth.
I expect that my team will consider all that I know, and all they have learned, and make the best decision possible. I also ask that they tell me what decision they made and what information they used to make their decision.
My day job is as an IT Help Desk Manager for a regional financial services company. Not that I’m counting, but I’d guess I make over 100 decisions every day, and my team has to make 150 decisions or more per day. This adds up to over 1247 decisions a day that we are required to make.
Do we always make the right decision? Nope, but we don’t work in an emergency room, so nobody dies. We just make the best decision we can, and then make another decision, and then another decision, and we get to the right answer. It might take time, but troubleshooting computer problems and navigating through a 2500 person company to understand the question and get the caller to the right end point is a tough business.
Take the shot, and take a better shot next time if this one didn’t work out.
Here’s my favorite quote that explains this self-management principle:
“You miss 100 percent of the shots you never take.” - Wayne Gretzky
Do you have a great method for making decisions or a quote that explains your method of decision making? Please share it in the comments below so we can learn from your experience.
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POSTED IN: Phil Gerbyshak, decision making
6 opinions for How to make 1247 decisions a day
ScottG
Sep 22, 2008 at 8:31 am
Read teh book “Leading at a higher level” by Ken Blanchard regarding empowering the employees to make decisions on their own and thus creating eagles instead of ducks that just follow policy and serve upper management and not the customers (try naming a company that doesn’t have customers and I’ll show you a company that isn’t in existence!).
Louisa
Sep 22, 2008 at 11:42 am
I love your outlook on decision making, and also the Gretzky quote! I also have actually read the book mentioned by Scott “Leading at a Higher Level”. I am a manager at a staffing firm in Boston, Hollister Staffing (www.hollisterstaff.com) and when I started I was looking for any kind of book that might help me manage people and make decisions effectively. Some of the books/articles written by Peter Drucker were also very helpful to me, maybe something to check out!
Rob Hooft
Sep 22, 2008 at 11:46 am
People in my team are experts in fields that differ from my expertise. Of course I encourage them to take their own decisions. The most important reason why anyone would discuss with me beforehand is an extra alignment with the company goals. In general, I will not be able to add technical knowledge that changes the issue at hand. “What would Rob do” would be absolutely useless in this context….
Phil Dourado
Sep 23, 2008 at 2:27 am
Someone I worked with a while back, Simon Woodroffe, founder of the YO! Sushi chain of sushi bars (and now also founder of the YOtels! capsule hotels chain) says something similar on decision-making, Phil. When he started out, he said he struggled with decisions, so thought “What would Branson do?” and tried to think himself into being Richard Branson to help him make decisions. He calls this “acting as if…” i.e. acting as if you are Richard Branson, or whomever you admire as a decision-maker in the mould you want to be.
Gary Klein’s book Sources of Power, despite its title, is actually about decision-making. He cites Paul Van Riper, the retired Marine Lieutenant General famous in military circles for our-decisioning the Pentagon’s battlefield decision support system during war game exercises.
The decision-making ‘logic’ that Van Riper applied is that, in fast-moving situations, a decision based on 80 per cent of the information plus informed intuition is often far better than waiting for a 100 per cent informed solution.
The problem with the vast number of decisions we all have to make - as you say, hundreds every day - is we feel we have to decide fast to keep ahead of the list of decisions that need to be made, else a backlog builds up and they overwhelm us. Yes, fast decision-making is important. But Rudy Giuliani reminds us that the ability to ponder and reflect is then lost.
He says that we tend to think we have to make quick decisions to prove we are strong, decisive leaders in any situation. But, that he used to delay decisions until he absolutely had to make them, on the grounds that using the time to ponder outcomes and take in the advice of others before deciding is a sign of strength, not weakness.
Lastly, in our connected world, we mustn’t lose sight of the wisdom of crowds in decision-making. James Surowiecki puts it this way: “The more important a decision, the more important it is that it not be left in the hands of a single person.”
The old arguments that joint decisions or decisions that seem to be democratically based lack instant power and lead to compromise don’t in fact make sense any more, now that we can tap into the communal mind using the Net and use it as a ‘decision-making market’.
In any situation, as research shows, get together 100 random people and the aggregate of their decisions will out-perform the decisions of any single leader or manager. Some large organizations have experimented with ‘decision markets’ - bringing together people from all levels and getting them to pool their decision on a given problem. Over time, they out-perform the official ‘decision-makers’ - the official leaders of the organization.
That (the power of decision markets to out-perform individuals) doesn’t take away our responsibility for those hundreds of individual decisions, every day, that you talk about, Phil. But, it’s something people at the top of the organization need to be more aware of.
Phil Gerbyshak
Sep 24, 2008 at 7:49 pm
Such a smart bunch of commenters. Thank you all for weighing in with your insights.
Scott - your book recommendation is much appreciated. I’ve thought about getting that book, and now, I know I will.
Louisa - Drucker is outstanding. Definitely worth reading if you’re doing the management thing.
Rob - VERY interesting point, and one I certainly agree with. As a manager, the business acumen brought to the table IS higher for you, and your team most likely DOES have more visibility into their specialty skill set. A combination of the two seems like the smartest move. Thanks for adding to the conversation.
Phil - As usual, you are spot on and incredibly helpful. I can’t add much to what you said, other than thank you. You’ve given me MUCH to think on.
CK
Sep 26, 2008 at 8:49 am
The book “Leading at a higher level” as well as other have taught me how a business should be run. I also know how NOT to run a company or organization due to the unfortunate experiences with my employer. My employer is the Bazzarro in my Superman world!
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