Do you find that you are continually making business decisions, yet struggle to make significant progress on key issues?
The job of managers is to make decisions and manage the related actions that improve the effectiveness of your organisation. But you can find yourself trying to sort out too many issues at one time, preventing you from really achieving your objectives.
In the animal kingdom, creatures at the top of the food chain hunt their food sporadically, not continually. Those lower down are always grazing and eating. Similarly, highly effective managers are able to free up their time for other added-value activities, whereas the less effective are forever head-down in the latest ‘urgent’ issue.
There are three practical ways to release time by focusing your efforts on fewer, more important decisions.
- Focus on cause, not effect. If your roof leaks, you will initially put a bucket underneath the hole and adapt to the new situation. Spending all your time on adaptive decisions is the equivalent of replacing the bucket — you make decisions continually. If you decide to fix the roof, you only have to make one decision.
Q: How many of your problem-solving decisions are adaptive rather than corrective? - Do nothing. When faced with an issue there is a reflex response to do something about it. But doing nothing is often the best course of ‘action’ for many issues. First, many issues resolve themselves. How many ‘emergencies’ took place — and were resolved — while you were away on holiday? Second, some issues just aren’t important enough to justify the action required to remedy the situation.
Q: How many of your decisions have no material impact on the performance of your organisation? - Ask yourself if you’re the right person to make the decision. Your team members are often better placed to make decisions than you — no matter what you’re ego may tell you. If too many decisions are coming up the hierarchy to you for sign off, you may need to redefine your intent more clearly so people are clear what is expected of them. How many times have you made decisions that would have been better made by someone else?
Q: What techniques do you use to focus on those decisions where you can have the biggest impact?
