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Decisions: Cut and Dry?

Is any decision ever an easy one to make? I suppose that some decisions are, but it truly depends on the topic of discussion. For example, when my wife and I recently decided to go to Ruth Cris for Valentine's Day dinner, neither of us spent more than 0.13259876 seconds to come up with a collective "yes" on the matter.

Other decisions, especially business ones, are not so easy. Rarely does a manager have the luxury of deciding something that does not have ramifications beyond the five minutes immediately following the decision (save for where to go for lunch perhaps). Instead, they are frequently called upon to determine the direction that their ship will travel for the next week, month, or even year.

Consider the decision of hiring someone. Susan Docherty who leads the sales, service and marketing for GM's U.S. operations recently described her philosophy around the hiring process in an interview by the New York Times. There's no need to discuss it in detail, but I will mention one thing that is relevant to everyone reading this: such a decision with its potentially far reaching consequences is not taken lightly. In fact, she puts quite a bit of effort into researching potential candidates and inspecting them in person to determine the degree of fit within her team.

I claim that this is the hallmark of a good decision maker. Don't take what I'm saying to extremes, however. While it is certainly possible to over analyze things to the point of paralyzing oneself, it is also possible to do quite the opposite: make a decision off the cuff based solely on one's gut reaction; a recipe for disaster. ("Fools rush in where angels fear to tread," and all that nonsense is applicable here.)

What Ms. Docherty has done is develop a process to do enough analysis to support her when she makes the decision, but still avoids making the decision based solely on what information is available from other sources. In other words, she doesn't depend on the resume alone or even the input of others. Instead, all of these things are rolled up and kneaded like bread dough along with her own impressions she forms after meeting the person.

Once a decision has been made, then the crucial part of selling the decision to others begins. Specifically, any decision on policy, process, etc. will need the support of others - even subordinates - in order to be successful. Otherwise, you will have empty shells of people simply going through the motions, only trying to fulfill the letter of the law instead of the spirit of it. Selling decisions like these takes a certain degree of finesse (not unlike selling goods or services to clients of your company), and this should not be understated.

For example, another interview by the New York Times with George Cloutier yielded some very interesting and even good ideas about how to run a small- to mid-sized business. Yet the means by which he communicated these to the report came off as crass, arrogant, and even obnoxious. Do his ideas have merit? Yes. Would I be as willing as a small business owner to implement his ideas? Perhaps, but not without a lot more convincing as to why his ideas are better than my own. As it stands now, he comes off as someone looking down his nose at those his company serves, and no one likes hubris regardless of the shape or form it comes in.

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