Make business decisions quickly!

This may be more of a rant than a good blog post, but feel free to judge for yourself.

I have recently encountered a situation with a company that I feel has been  leveraging a high level of bureaucracy instead of making quick competent business decisions, and holding to those decisions to ensure they can move forward and make earn revenues.  I think they worry or are worrying too much about leveraging their power over the vendor base on potential business instead of allowing themselves to migrate and/or bring in new business.  I know every company has to worry about the bottom line, and that some companies look at EBIDTA, and some companies look at net profits, etc.  But, when is enough, enough, and a decision made before something blows up, and an opportunity has been missed or worse yet, lost to a competitor?   I think this happens all too often.   What causes this?  It could be any number of things.  Here is a small list of items which I think cripple the decision making process:

• Ego
• Too many layers of management slowing the process
• Too many managers with opinions
• Inadequate information to make a decision
• Inadequate expertise
• Lack of vision

I am not going to dote on the list, it is an emotional list, and I am sure with some thought I can put together a more adequate list. With this company, I am going to say they think they are making valid decisions, but in essence they are making ego based decisions because of a lack of real passion about their business, therefore having a lack of vision, inadequate expertise, too many people with opinions, and their egos make them suffer consequences they should not be suffering.

However, my point here is to discuss the title of this post, and that is to “Make business decisions quickly.”  Why?  Here are a few reasons why:

• Indecision impedes progress, whether the decision was the right one or not.  If it was not the right decision you can change course quickly and recover.  Of course this assumes you realize it was the wrong decision in a timely manner.
• Waffling over making a business decision only makes you more indecisive.  Go with your gut, and get it done.  If you were wrong, correct and make another decision.

Here are a few questions to help you with the process of making your business decision quickly:

• Do I have all the information I need to make a correct decision?
• What options do I have?
• What happens if I make the wrong decision?
• How will I feel if the decision I make is wrong?
• Have I ever needed to make a similar decision in the past? If so, what was the outcome?
• What is my intuition telling me to do?Think about what you think of people that make good business decisions. Think about how you may respect them. They seem to always land on their feet. Additionally, if they can make solid decisions, their employees seem to have little problem following them into the field of battle, and are viewed as competent leaders.

Making your fast business decision:

Know the result that you want to achieve. You wouldn’t be making the decision if it were not a goal you wanted to achieve. If there is no solid goal behind the decision, rethink the decision.

Be rational when making your decision. Make your decision after thorough thought and with as little emotion involved as you can. Process the information internally, make additional notes, and jot down additional questions that need to be answered. Remove the emotion.

Have the courage. This statement, rests inside you. It is the emotional part of the decision… Have the courage to not only make the right decision, but to also make the wrong decision. Be brave, everybody wants to. If you need to work up to having the courage to make a large business decision, you need practice. Practice by making smaller decisions first, and working up to larger ones. By the time you need to make that big decision you should be comfortable doing so.

All the information. Get all the intelligence. Do your reconnaissance. Organize the information in to an easy to follow PowerPoint deck, or in a notebook so you can access it easily and digest the information quickly. It will help in making your decision quickly.

Follow your companies core values. The key with this is to be honest with yourself, your company, your employees, and your customers/clients. Let them know what you are doing and when you do it, how it is going to benefit them or how it is not going to benefit them. They need to know and understand.