Making Decisions and making it right

How difficult or easy do you find in making decisions? Be it personal spheres or professional aspects, are you a hesitant or a proactive decision maker? While decision making is an art (soft skill as more commonly known), but it is as much as your mindset.

In my experience, I have found very minimum % of individuals who try and make a decision. Most are reluctant and try to dodge the situation by some or the other argument. Political inconclusive statements, demands for additional information are couple of very commonly used reasoning to encourage the hanging situation. While this indecisiveness may prove very costly for respective organizations or for a matter in personal lives, many of us still prefer to be that way.

But why? Why are we so reluctant to make decisions and hold ourselves accountable? Is it because all of us are not up to mark aptitude-wise to take a call? Is it because we don't realize the importance in a given context? I perceived it in other way.

Its about playing safe, avoiding ownership and passing on the given responsibility. Fear of individual failure is too deep to make decision. We are negatively preoccupied with the thought that our mistake won't be taken rightly by our bosses (hence, by our organizations). The fundamentals of leadership and team work is at stake here!

Sir Alex: Decisions
Sir Alex was a master at making decisions. Listen to his advice on the topic from his new book... Leading: www.manutd.com/leading
Posted by Manchester United on Wednesday, September 9, 2015

Now is there a way to get through this negativity? At organization level, I am not aware of any institution who does not welcome mistakes. At least in principle, everybody supports learning through mistake. But practice of that principle is more important!

With a reality check: all such principles get tossed down during pressure and instant-result oriented situations. Most of the supervisors forget how to foster new ideas through calculative risks, rather they seek ready-made solutions. And, we all understand what our bosses expectations are! Results follow accordingly!

We all (decision maker, supervisor, stakeholders) need to adjust our mindset to overcome this barrier. Its about making decisions based on given set of information, making decisions keeping best of the outcomes in mind. Decisions must be taken towards success: Make decision, take accountability and put all your weight behind to make it a 'Successful Decision'.

Errors may happen - but its more important to understand where and why it went wrong. Not making decisions and keeping yourself away from ownership are not going to help any party. Its important to make decisions and making it to get it right.