We all take a lot of decisions during our life. These decisions affect ourselves, our life, family, friends, business world, companies, in some cases our country, even the world. Sometimes we take them thoughtlessly. But our analytical thinking, experience, knowledge, courage and risk identification skills are the values that direct our decision-making.
Famous American management professor Noel Tichy says that perfect decisions are not made by a chance. We also share this idea. In this article, we will share with you our opinion on principles of a decision-making. But these principles concern only decisions related to business world, especially startups.
Managers and employees frequently find themselves in situations when they had to make decisions on various topics. This is a key factor for each company and each startup in order to keep itself productive and competitive that plays more intensive and important role day after day. New information technology tools are one of our key supporters in this process. Particularly, during last period we mostly use CRM programs. These tools accelerate our decision-making and make it more precise.
But another issue flashes at this point: veracity of analyzed data. Accuracy and completeness of used information is as important as a decision itself. Outcomes of our decisions should be sustainable and should not go beyond ultimate target, mission of the company. Decisions related to ambitious, big business plans entail risks, perils, expenses and difficulties in parallel with an importance and scope of the decision. That’s why, we need to simplify the decisions and their application.
We always think in 4 phases when making big decisions. The first phase is preparation. In this period, we have to achieve full awareness of the topic along with collecting and analyzing appropriate information. Second, making a decision and announcing it to staff. Third phase is application of the decision. Fourth is the most crucial one. This is correction of mistakes, if there are such. Don’t forget admitting a mistake prevents a new mistake and this a key trait for each leader.
We would like to touch upon decision making processes of startups. One of the most frequent shortcomings of newly founded companies is related to leadership. Usually these persons have more weaknesses than strengths. We believe that awareness of his/her limits is a key strength of leader in such cases. The next point is his/her conception of support to his team and approach to the outsourcing to fill the gap of the team. These two points affect not only startups’ decisions on particular issue, but also constant decision-making process of company.
Most leaders face a problem of hesitating. Especially, managers of newly founded companies have some indecision due to lack of experience. This causes the company to fall behind in competition. Business doesn’t forgive hesitations. Each leader must be sure in his/her decision and work., and should not be afraid of making mistakes. Business grows through making mistakes; hesitation simply slows it down. Finally, let us finish with a quote from well-known author Nietzsche: “If you you are going to make an initiative, close the door of indecisiveness”.
