Why Most Decisions Are Meaningless

I have been wrestling with an extremely important decision for my business in the last few days.  This caused me to realize I haven’t addressed the topic of decision making in my content recently.  The right decisions are vitally important, of course.  But the most important part of a decision is NOT deciding what to do.  So many of our decisions are meaningless because nothing ever comes of them.  In this episode find out how to follow through with decisions.

For the last three or four days I’ve been deciding whether or not to take on a new responsibility.  My wife and I were discussing this last night.  We were amused to realize how differently I make decisions now.  A few years ago, I made decisions in thirty seconds instead of three or four days.  If I thought there was a good idea, I made the decision to go for it!  However, I now realize the most important part of making a decision is NOT deciding what to do.  Rather, the most important part of the decision is answering the question of what to STOP doing.

Suppose you say, “I have a great idea.  I’m going to spend an extra hour with my kids every day.  That would make me a better dad.  I just made a great decision.”  The important decision is what are you NOT going to do for an hour, so you can spend an extra hour with your kids?  If you don’t make that part of the decision, then you never made the first part.  Here is the crux of this matter:  you must stop doing something if you want to start doing something.

Deciding to spend three hours a day on a new responsibility is a big deal for me.  That may sound like nothing to some of you.  But three hours is tons and tons of time for me.  I had to carve a ridiculous amount of things out of my life to fit in that three hours!  I’m about to hire an employee to help me with this project.  One of the employee’s jobs will be to get my lunch every day.  I discovered I spend an average of 45 minutes a week driving to get lunch.  So, there is part of my three hours.  There are some other things which I really like to do that I decided not to do anymore. 

Another part of a decision just as important is how you are going to track your progress and how you’ll have accountability.  At the end of my discussion with my wife she asked, “What do you think; are you going to do it?”  My response was, “I’m still not convinced.  I figured out how to get the three hours a day.  But I don’t know who is going to manage me.”  You may wonder why the CEO needs to be managed!  Some of you may be new to entrepreneurship or wondering if you want to be your own boss.  This may seem funny to you.  The CEO can do whatever he/she wants, right?  That’s exactly the problem!  My thought is, “I really need a manager for this.  How am I going to get the right level of accountability to force myself to make sure I do what I’m supposed to do with this three hours a day for ninety days?  That’s a lot of time.”

This principle is very important for entrepreneurship.  You don’t really want to be your own boss; you just don’t want to have a boss.  If you don’t want to have a boss, you are going to fail, fail, fail – guaranteed!  If you want to be your own boss, you’ll have a schedule and goals.  You’ll be tracking things and setting up accountability for yourself.  Then maybe you can be successful in business.  You MUST have structure and accountability though.   

I’m breaking down my new responsibility.  I know who is going to track the metrics.  I’m going to share it with all my employees – group accountability.  But I still wonder if that’s enough.  I may call on some other people outside my company to help.  I’ll ask to share my report every day and have a quick fifteen-minute phone call.  Then I’ll be embarrassed if I don’t hit the goals I laid out.  We all need that kind of accountability.   

So, make sure you mean business in your decision making.  Remember the crux of this matter:  you must stop doing something if you want to start doing something.

Read the previous post here:  The Goal with the Gatekeeper – Cold Calling Techniques  http://www.ccsalespro.com/goal-gatekeeper-cold-calling-techniques/

Read the next article here:  Eliminate Your Priorities – Organized for Success  http://www.ccsalespro.com/eliminate-priorities-organized-success/