Better Business Decisions are something that almost all business leaders need to work on. When we’re starting out, necessity often forces our hand. There may be better decisions to be had, but we’re forced in a different direction. This week, the Entrepreneur’s Organization’s Octane Blog has a good contribution from Dr. Gleb Tsipursky on his 8 suggested steps for making better business decisions. It actually blends nicely with last week’s Harvard Business Review article on the importance of an owner’s mindset to the success of a business. Bad decision-making can be disastrous,
Decca Records famously turned down the Beatles. Motorola chose not to make smartphones. Elon Musk tweeted about taking Uber private and plummeted his company into chaos. Boeing’s leadership made some terrible decisions to cover up problems and rush production of the 737 Max. In all cases, their competitors took advantage of these failures to seize market share.
The advice from Dr. Tsipursky can apply to organizations of any size. Arguably, you don’t even need to limit it to a business context. If you need to make a big decision at home, you could probably apply the process to those as well.
Dr. Tsipursky’s 8 Steps for Better Business Decisions
To make better business decisions, Dr. Tsipursky has 8 steps for you:
- Recognize that a decision needs to be made.
- Collect relevant information from a range of informed perspectives on the issue.
- Determine your goals and envision the desired outcome.
- Develop clear decision making criteria to evaluate your options.
- Generate viable options that can achieve your goals.
- Weigh these options, then pick the best ones.
- Implement the option you chose.
- Evaluate the implementation process, and revise as necessary.
Do you seem some ways you can improve your decision-making? As part of these steps, one that may be undervalued in many is the importance of #7: Implementation. Like many other business owners, I am consistently barraged with decisions to make. Some of them have worked out (starting a print newsletter). Others have been spectacular failures (overpaying for SEO that returned zero results).
An important lesson I learned is the power of implementation. While it feels good to take time and think about what to do, we often get caught up at that stage. Without some kind of motivation or push, we end up waiting to act. Another result I often encounter is trying too hard to make things perfect before launching. Instead, take that next step. Implement. Get moving. Those better business decisions won’t choose themselves…
Next Steps
There can be a variety of major business decisions that have a legal component. If you’re faced with one or are getting ready to implement a change that could benefit from legal counsel, call my office to set up a Legal Strategy Session and we can review the best options for you – (877) AMAYERS.
