“You cannot escape the responsibility of tomorrow by evading it today.” - Abraham Lincoln

Procrastination...

It’s the killer of so many great businesses and business ideas. And it only really exists because too many business owners are scared of making decisions in business.

Or should I say, they are too scared of making the wrong decision.

Yet, decision-making is one of the biggest ingredients of becoming an efficient business beast.

Everybody makes countless choices every single day.

When your alarm goes off in the morning, you decide whether to get up or stay in bed. You decide what to eat for lunch. If the phone rings, you decide whether to answer or ignore it.

But even simple decision-making can feel heavy for some people.

They’ll question their choices all day long:

• If the day goes badly, it’s “I should have stayed in bed.”

• If lunch is disappointing, it’s “I knew I should have had the salad.”

And worse? Some people get stuck in indecision, believing if they make no decision at all, the problem will just vanish. (Spoiler: it doesn’t!)

Here’s the truth: not making a decision is still a decision. You have actively decided not to act. And in business, that’s dangerous.

When it comes to building confidence in leadership decision-making, there are 3 key elements you need to focus on...👊

🔥 1. WHAT DO YOU KNOW NOW? 🔥

Hindsight or 20/20 vision is never available at the time of making any decision. It only becomes available after the fact.

I mean, let’s face it – who honestly could have foreseen the scale and severity of the COVID "crisis".

So how can you have true confidence in the decisions you make?

Well, the simple fact of the matter is that you can never be truly confident. All you can do is base your decisions on the facts you have RIGHT NOW. Not tomorrow. Not in a week’s time. But now.

You need to get all of your facts together and assess them, along with any other information or factors you currently have.

Once you have assessed that information, make the best decision you can with the information available.

Also, don’t be too proud to use the collective experience of your team to get to the best possible solution. There just might be someone in the team who has already been through a similar experience and witnessed the outcomes.

Look, unless you have a crystal ball that looks into the future (in which case, can I have this week’s Lotto numbers, please?), you can only base your decisions on what you know right now.

🔥 2. JUST MAKE THE DECISION!!! 🔥

You’ve reviewed your facts, thought about the pros and cons, taken the external factors into account, checked to see that the Earth is still rotating on its… STOP IT!!!

No level of procrastination will take away from the fact that you have to make a call. One way or another, a decision has to be made.

In a business sense, failing to make a decision can actually be more costly than making a wrong decision. How?

Well, if you make a wrong decision, it usually doesn’t take too long to figure out that the decision was indeed wrong.

Remember that you only find out that it is wrong after the fact and you can always change that decision and choose a different course.

But if you don’t make any clear-cut decision, you and your team will just be sitting there. You’ll be waiting for some guiding light to show you the way. Twiddling your thumbs…

The cost of this procrastination can be endless.

Don’t be scared to make the decision. You can always change that decision if you think you’ve screwed up.

Which leads me to my final point…

🔥 3. IT'S OK TO CHANGE YOUR DECISION 🔥

That’s right. You heard correctly. It’s OK to change your decision.

Remember that you made your initial decision based on the facts and information you had at the time.

If things change, or other information comes to light, or if you simply realise that you made the wrong call—change it. CHANGE YOUR DECISION.

Being a great and efficient leader in a time of crisis (or at any time for that matter) isn’t just about getting the decisions right.

It’s also about knowing when you get things wrong and not being too proud to make the required change.

And I’ll probably argue until I’m blue in the face that a wrong decision is in fact not a wrong decision at all. It’s merely a learning experience on the way to making the right decision or choice.

However, if you keep making the same wrong decisions and expect a different outcome, then that’s no longer learning. That’s plain insanity.

Humans, by nature, hate to be wrong. They would rather persevere with a wrong decision in an attempt to save face than take responsibility, make the required change and move on.

Having said that, I know which person I have the greater respect for. How about you?

FINAL THOUGHTS

Making decisions shouldn’t be as difficult as we make it out to be. Our brain is constantly making decisions at a rate I can’t even begin to fathom.

It is the fear we attribute to potentially making the wrong decision that makes decision-making difficult. Especially when those decisions may affect others.

However, in my humble opinion, I have a genuine respect for people who can make decisions. Even in difficult circumstances. Trust me—they feel the same fear we all do when making a tough call.

But they also understand the importance of making a decision and the negative impact procrastination can have.

Like I said earlier, hindsight is a wonderful thing. So many of us say that we would have done things differently after the fact.

But if you were presented with exactly the same situation, with the same information, same facts, same environment at the same point in your life, would you really have done things differently?

I would argue not.

Commit yourself to being a decision-maker. I want you to just give it a go.

Just make a decision based on the facts and information you have… remember you can always make another decision to change it if it’s not right.

Hey - you may even learn to like making decisions 😊.