Running a business, any business is a series of loosely-connected decisions in your business day that you will not even be conscious of making. In fact, if anyone asks me the greatest gift you could bestow on anyone I’d say the gift of making great decisions. Decisions are binary, there are only two types of decisions, good ones and bad ones. It sounds obvious but the ramifications of decisions can play out over a lifetime, sometimes the effects are immediate other times they can take years to manifest. Decision-making is based on many different factors some obvious the others so subtle that even we are unaware of the key drivers behind our end decisions. The most obvious is our mood and state of mind, the other is our true and real motivation from ego-led anger to revenge. If we are at peace with ourselves and think about an important decision after a good night’s sleep we may find we reach a totally different decision, so the state of mind is key especially in all big decisions making tipping points.
Decisions, decisions occur regularly in daily business life, from the small mundane stuff, like do I get my coffee now or after my early morning calls, through to the big stuff, like how many apprentices are we taking on this year, what courses will we place them on, and what value will they add to our company…..and everything in between, there’s a decision to be made for literally every aspect of your business life.
You’ll need to be fast, certain, flexible, adaptable, willing to change your mind, able to stand your ground, able to communicate your idea and reasoning effectively to others, and listen to the input from those around you…..all at the same time. Usually without even thinking about it, because ‘business decision making’ just becomes your daily default operating process.
A high percentage of new businesses fail within their first year of operation. Not necessarily badly run businesses you understand, but for sure ones that didn’t adapt, change, move, sidestep, decide to be different….decisions, How you make them, How quickly you implement them. Then the next one, Then the one after that. And so on. Forever, because this is your life now.
The actual act of decision-making is a process of selecting the best course of action or plan from different alternatives available. It is a means through which managers take action for solving the problem, to the best of their ability and using all the available knowledge. So listening, information gathering, and information processing skills are all critical parts of the decision-making process in business. This is all an integral part of the management system of the company which should aim to improve efficiency or improve the business in some other meaningful way. Decision-making is the one through which managers are able to take the right decisions at right time.
Taking decisions is the core part of every organisation’s management team. If any wrong decision is taken then it would be having negative consequences on the organisation. It may affect its overall functioning making it difficult for organisations to attain their goals. The Decision-making process makes it possible to choose the right action among different alternatives at the right time. The selection of the right decision makes it easy to properly manage all business affairs and easily attain objectives.
There are many books or even courses available to you, but I think that this is the true measure of someone who’s likely to be a successful entrepreneur or not: do you really need those things? Is your decision-making – and by extension the other skills mentioned – good enough to stand alone, or not? Because there’s no hand-holding in business: you’re in charge, it’s all down to you.
Written by Stephen Taylor, Propaganda CEO
