The Elements of a Clear Decision

The success of an enterprise is the sum of decisions made in the course of doing business. It must follow, then, that a manager’s value lies in the quality of his or her decisions. Effective leaders make their decision-making look easy. As with superior athletes or gifted artists, they seem to be relying on instinct and intrinsic gifts, while all the while executing a learned response that is the result of endless practice and discipline. Good decisions hinge on mental clarity. Clarity comes from a state of mental concentration, of focusing thoughts and paying attention. Clarity is reached by training the mind to be precise and accurate in its definitions, assumptions and evaluations.

Having worked with hundreds of CEOs of various size companies in many industries, I have concluded that there is a state of mind — a clarity state — that the decision maker must reach in order for a good decision to come together. The clarity state is characterized by a balance of physical, mental and emotional systems. According to findings in both neuroscience and sports physiology, it is actually a measurable physical and emotional state of being relaxed, positive and focused. Neuroscientists confirm that reaching that state of coherence enables us to use more of our brain power than we normally do. Athletes and trainers have come to realize that reaching that balanced mental state can greatly improve physical performance.

Interestingly, much of today’s conventional wisdom about effective management and leadership runs counter to achieving clarity. The habit of multitasking, for example, which had been practically deified, is in sharp contrast with achieving the focus that leads to peak performance. Being competitive, which is considered inextricable from being effective, creates stress and anxiety. Neuroscientists have proved that under stress our brains fall into the state of cortical inhibition, essentially closing down certain parts of our brains for use. Similarly, the national religion of workaholism, exacerbated by the ubiquity of cell phones and the Internet, can lead to so much stress and fatigue that the brain chronically operates at lower capacity.

Effective leaders instinctively know how to overcome these obstacles and reach the clarity state. For others, reaching clarity is a skill that can be learned, and once learned, it can be leveraged. But attaining clarity in a physical and emotional sense will not alone ensure a clear decision. That requires the decision maker to correctly frame the perspective and parameters of the decision, define the objectives and options and align the decision with desirable outcomes. In other words, making a clear decision requires leadership, which comprises four elemental qualities.

Authenticity

A conventionalist judges a decision by its consequences. Leaders are paid to select strategies that increase value to shareholders, increase sales and improve effectiveness — strategies that will deliver the best consequences for the business. All business decisions are usually made with these major objectives in mind. However, no one can fully foresee the consequences of a decision at the moment he or she is making it. The market, along with other forces, can interfere and change the environment. As a result, many managers are paralyzed by the fear of making the wrong choice.

Effective leaders judge decisions by different criteria. They define the rightness of a decision by the degree to which it is aligned with their vision. In order to reach clarity, effective leaders focus on three components that they can control: the quality of the decision-making process, the quality of data involved in the decision and the level of internal alignment with the choice. Note that this does not guarantee good decision consequences, but it does guarantee that the decision maker will do whatever is in his or her power to deliver the result intended by the decision.

Responsibility

A clear decision can arise only when someone takes responsibility for it. Only those who are prepared to bear the consequences of a decision have the right to make it. Great ideas are often sacrificed in the drive for consensus. Too many managers hide behind the need for consensus and thus abdicate their responsibility to decide. This often spells nothing more than mediocrity, procrastination and paralysis — and the impact on the business can be profoundly negative.

A focus on consensus can also often discourage disagreement and the proper identification and evaluation of crucial decision factors. The best solution comes through debate, not consensus. Many decisions go bad because certain critical parameters were not exposed during the decision-making process. Effective leaders often create contention on purpose, realizing truth is born in the clash of divergent opinions. Franklin Roosevelt was known to ask subordinates whom he knew had different perspectives on an issue to work on it “in strictest confidence.” He knew perfectly well that such secret assignments would immediately become known to other people, thus creating a contentious environment. Creating contention is often the fastest path to clarity, but effective leaders recognize their ultimate responsibility to identify and select the best alternative possible.

Vision

A decision is a risk-taking judgment based upon an educated prediction of how the future will unfold. Most managers employ analytical methods to make decisions, but analysis by itself does not constitute vision. Vision is the product of intuition and imagination. Analytical tools can bolster and educate those capabilities, but are no substitute for them. Analysis presents data and options. Vision is necessary in order to know what questions to ask and what deductions to trust.

The ability to envision can be developed and sharpened with practice and continuous assessment of the past decisions’ results. Some executives create elaborate scenarios with complex scripts in their mind and engage in playing them over and over, altering certain parts of the script, changing conditions and changing players. Some envision an array of end results until one “clicks in” as the right one. Using the mind in this way, as a playground of ideas, is the most effective way to attain the clarity state because the process is neither wholly analytical, nor wholly intuitive, but a creative, seamless blend of both.

Courage

By making a decision and selecting an alternative from a set of options, you announce to the world your vision for the future. You might be the only person with this vision. And it might be wrong. Taking this stance requires courage. The more irreversible a decision, the more courage it requires.

I worked with one executive team that was engaged in shaping its globalization strategy. When I asked one executive why the team’s meetings seemed to be flat and lacked energy, he replied, “We know what has to be done. We should have done it six months ago. We are just losing time.” The team leader evidently lacked the courage to proceed. Lack of courage will cause a decision-maker to automatically, sometimes unconsciously, eliminate potentially good but highly risky decisions from consideration.

In the final analysis, achieving the clarity state can create an environment conducive to insight and even epiphany. But without the hard-won leadership qualities of authenticity, responsibility, vision and courage, there may be clarity, but there can be no clear decision.