Executives many times have to make tough decisions to keep the business on track. It’s just the way the job is. But the toughest of decisions comes in the dark areas. These are cases where you and your team mine all the data you can, and do all the analysis you can yet the situation seems inconclusive.
For example, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala’s choice to defile the ultimation of the people who kidnapped her 83 year old mother with a demand that she resign from her position as the Finance Minister in Nigeria and sign their fraudulent contract papers or have her mother executed was a tough choice. Think about it how do you risk the execution of your mother by choosing to fight corruption? If she dies, will you be able to forgive yourself? Can you stand public condemnation in exchange for being a corruption war lord? Under such circumstances it’s easy to become paralyzed and seek any available route. But it is your responsibility as a leader to judge the situation fairly and take the right decision. Which again begs the question of which decision is right?
Your judgement is critical in moving the organisation forward. Yet your judgement could be limited by your thinking, feelings, experience, imagination, and character.
Through history leaders have found themselves in situations where they must make tough choices, decisions that define the life and destiny of people whether as a large group or small group. Imagine a decision to go to war or fire a key executive for corruption.
But by relying on the principles I intend to discuss here you can improve your chances of making better informed and effective decisions every time even with incomplete, unclear data, divided opinions and different interest.
Effective executives rely on these principles when tough decisions must be made for better decisions and I’m sure it will help you and your team in navigating through tough decisions.
When next you have a tough decision to make, don’t get upset, relax and use the following principles: Every decision has a net consequence; your office is defined by your core obligations; effective decisions must take cognisance of the world as it is; every organisation must stay true to its identity; your choices will have outcomes.
Through history leaders have found themselves in situations where they must make tough choices, decisions that define the life and destiny of people whether as a large group or small group. Imagine a decision to go to war or fire a key executive for corruption
Every decision has a net consequence
You have to understand that every decision carries a real world effect. So, difficult questions are ever hardly resolved in a flash of intuition. So you need to thoroughly and analytically consider all courses of action available to you in terms of real life human consequences of each option.
Let go of your presumptions, and get your team together and list all possible options, considering who will be helped or hurt, short term and long term by every option possible. This is not the same as cost benefit analysis, so you should take a broad, deep, concrete, imaginative, and objective look at the full impact of your choices.
Indeed it is difficult to predict with accuracy the full impact of any choice but what’s important is that you walk from the position of love, see others the way you see yourself. Knowing that your decision on grey issues carry real life consequences which affects the lives of people and communities, you want to focus on the picture and the greater good even when you and maybe others must suffer immediate pain. So it’s important to take the time to open your mind, assemble the right team, and analyse your options through the lens of love.
Your office is defined by your core obligations
Your position as a business leader is defined by your obligations. You are obligated to both shareholders and other stake holders in your business. But besides this is our moral responsibility to safeguard and respect the lives, rights, and dignity of our fellow men and women. All of us owe this to ourselves and our world.
When you have a hard call to make, step out of your comfort zone, put yourself in the shoes of others especially the ones likely to be affected by your decision. How would you feel in their position? What would you react if someone else were to make this decision about someone related to you? How would you want to be treated? What would you see as fair? What rights would you believe you had? What would you consider to be hateful? You might speak directly to the people who will be affected by your decision, or find someone in your team to fish out that information.
At your business school classes you were taught that your core responsibility is your company but you’ll need to understand that this is a broad statement that includes the environment, workers, government, customers and the community the company serves. You have serious obligations to everyone simply because you are a human being. When you face a grey-area decision, you have to think—long, hard, and personally—about which of these duties stands at the head of the line.
BRIAN REUBEN
Dr Reuben is one of the most sought after thought leaders on the subject of Strategy in Nigeria. He speaks at business events globally. He has written over 150 articles and facilitated over 200 strategy training programs for senior executives in diverse industries. He has advised and mentored senior executives in several organisations including Africa-Reinsurance Corporation, Savile Energy Luxembourg, Department of Petroleum Resources, Trident Energy United Kingdom, BusinessDay, and Dolphin Telecom among others.
