How To Make Tough Business Decisions Easier
In a perfect world, your business would never be in a situation where difficult decisions need to be made. Problems wouldn’t arise that disrupt the flow of your operations and growth. Instead, each issue would have a clear, concise and entirely beneficial solution.
However, the reality is, easy choices are rarely the norm, and tough decisions are often needed.
For example, imagine you map out a clear 90-day plan for your business, but 30 days into execution, your team uncovers new priorities, and you’re faced with shifting strategies to reach your goals. How do you decide, in real time, what your strategic next step should be? Making tough decisions gets easier with practice, particularly when you employ the following process.
Important Considerations Before Acting
Before you take any steps toward changing course or making tough decisions, there are a few things you’ll want to consider.
First and foremost, it’s important to understand that some of your team may not be comfortable with tough decisions or may push back against speedy change. Start by planning out how you want to communicate the change, and tailor that messaging to those who will and won’t initially be receptive.
I can’t emphasize enough the importance of controlling your messaging internally. Stress will already be high, so without clear communication, a narrative you don’t want to be shared could easily spread like wildfire. It’s leadership’s responsibility to guide the team and communicate information as it becomes necessary and available. This process will build trust around your decisions, which will help get the entire team on board.
Additionally, think ahead and identify an exit strategy. While reverting back may seem next to impossible once the decision is made, consider all exit options. Similar to the concept I discussed in a previous article about needing a tailwind to scale your business, ensuring you have a security blanket and contingency plan is a crucial first step when making tough decisions.
Making Calculated Bets
Once you’ve spent time on the steps mentioned above, now it’s time to dig into the decision-making process.
The best decisions are typically informed by copious amounts of data, but data won’t always be widely available in every situation. As a responsible leader, you’d likely love to have time for advanced testing, buckets of customer feedback and the completion of a planning cycle. But when you don’t have that luxury and you need to decide quickly, making a calculated bet is your best option — with your safety blanket ready and waiting. (This is why doing pre-planning work is incredibly critical!)
In the end, you need to choose which door you’ll walk (or, in some cases, run) through. You either roll the dice and wait or act immediately and kick the door down. In some cases, speed and knowing you may fail is better than delaying.
When communicating tough decisions, it’s critical your team clearly understands why you’re making a calculated bet, why you’re confident about the potential outcome and whether you have an exit strategy.
Making calculated bets also means understanding the trickle-down effect the decision will have on other areas of your business. It’s not as simple as changing back to an original product version — there could be public relations and branding adjustments to make, and most importantly, there could be effects on the morale of the team that was involved in the process. Go into this process consciously aware that you’ll likely have to do some patchwork, but if you’re constantly communicating and reminding people of the bigger picture, you can keep everything aligned while making tough decisions.
Assess Urgency Vs. Importance
My wife loves the saying, “Don’t make the urgent things more important than the important things in life.” There are some moments, like family birthdays, we should never postpone for less important matters.
On the other hand, from a business perspective, there are absolutely times when a quick but calculated bet will take precedence over the previously identified important items. Some moments call for a calculated bet to include a waiting period before decisions are made, which is ironically a tough decision to combat the tough decision! But some things can truly wait. Determining the best course of action typically comes down to the ability to gather more information.
Whether it’s an overflow of data or assessing the effects of a global pandemic, biding your time means understanding the long-term benefits of waiting compared to taking immediate action. This is the pinnacle moment in making tough decisions: understanding the entire big picture, weighing the pros and cons, and deciding the best course of action through a clear process.
Post-Decision
Congratulations, you’ve made your tough decision! Now what? Your team shouldn’t rest on their laurels just yet. No matter which door you chose, now’s the time for management to rebuild what may have broken during the process, including team trust/morale, marketing campaigns or sales strategies. Take time to reflect with leaders, and have conversations with those on the front line who were directly impacted by the decision.
It’s critical to show positive results early, whether you choose to make sweeping changes to address issues or wait for more data. This strategy will encourage your teams, showing that while the journey may be unnerving and a little rocky, incremental progress is happening and will make the difficult times worth riding out.
You may never come across a leader who says they love challenging decisions, but making tough decisions can become easier when you follow this process.