There is only one most important thing in every project, goal, and company.”
As a leader, you have to pick one criterion above all the others and communicate it in a way that your people can understand so they can make decisions on their own.
This is clear thinking.
Days are made up of small decisions, and those decisions put you in a good or bad position over time.
The 4 steps for making big decisions – framework
Defining the problem
To understand is to know what to do”
Defining the problem starts with identifying two things:
- What you want to achieve, and
- What obstacles stand in the way of getting it.
- Speak with experts, listen, sort out what is real, take in different perspectives.
- Handy tool: What would have to be true for this problem not to exist in the first place?
- When asking a group: What do you know about this problem that other people in the room don’t know?
Exploring possible solutions
The quality of your decisions is directly related to the quality of your thoughts. The quality of your thoughts is directly related to the quality of your information”
Imagine outcomes:
The way to come up with possible solutions is by imagining different possible futures—different ways the world could turn out.
Bad outcome principle – Imagine bad and good:
Don’t just imagine the ideal future outcome. Imagine the things that could go wrong and how you’ll overcome them if they do. If you’ve got a presentation to the board next week, imagine all the ways it could go wrong: What if technology fails? What if they can’t find the presentation? What if the audience isn’t engaged?
3+ Principle – 3 possible solutions:
Force yourself to explore at least three possible solutions to a problem. If you find yourself considering only two options, force yourself to find at least one more.
Evaluating the options
Intelligent people make decisions based on opportunity costs…it’s your alternatives that matter. That’s how we make all our decisions”
- Combine binary: Try to find ways of combining the binary. Think not in terms of choosing either X or Y, but rather having both X and Y.
- Opportunity Costs: Compared to what? And then what? At the expense of what?
- Clarity: The criteria must favor exactly one option.
- How to Safeguard the Evaluation Stage: There is only one most important thing in every project, goal, and company. If you have two or more most important things, you’re not thinking clearly. This is an important aspect of leadership and problem-solving in general: you have to pick one criterion above all the others and communicate it in a way that your people can understand so they can make decisions on their own.
Before Parrish invested in Pixel Union he figured out the biggest thing for him: Use Sticky Notes in this exercise:
- Win-win for employees, customers and shareholders
- Growing rather than shrinking the business
- Working with people he trusts
- Not having to manage people or ad more to plate
- Not borrowing money
- A high probability of a decent ROI
Making the judgment and executing the best option
- When the stakes are high, and there are no take backs, you want to decide at the last moment possible. Keep as many options on the table as you can while you gather more information.
- If stakes are low, move fast.