The Art of Making Good Business Decisions

By Mike DuBose

Strong, profitable businesses with solid foundations are the result of many right, courageous decisions. But, effective leaders know they cannot make perfect decisions every time – it’s all about trial and error. Failure is a part of the success equation. I often look into the mirror and ask, “Why did I do that? What was I thinking?” I have apologized to my staff for poor decisions, although they seemed good at the time I made them. Many leaders revisit, remind everyone, or beat themselves up over company past failures and mistakes, versus building on them. I prefer to swim upstream and be different!

My decision making skills improved with experience thanks to close mentors -- Mistake, Murphy, and Failure. But, my errors and a good perspective turned extremely painful business and personal tragedies into precious, treasured gifts from God! It’s all how one perceives bumps in the road. Thomas Edison commented, “I never failed. I found 10,000 ways that didn’t work!”

Good decision making is no accident – it requires the right, serious attitude. Employees, customers, and businesses suffer when conflict is ignored and poor decisions are made.

There are two decision makers: those who try, stumble, get up, and try again; and those who fear stumbling and cease trying. I view our businesses as exciting, great experiments and decision making an adventurous puzzle. It’s about experimenting and knowing I will fail in order to succeed. “Success is the ability to go from one failure to another with no less enthusiasm.” -- Winston Churchill

I believe that effective decision making and problem solving are separated into eight phases:

Preventing: Successful, proactive leaders “anticipate the unanticipated.” My entrepreneurial grandmother said, “Hope for the best. Prepare for the worse!” Think what can go right and wrong simultaneously. At Columbia Conference Center, we try to predict problems: bad weather -- tornados; health crisis -- customer having a heart attack; infrastructure failures -- electrical outages; etc. By pinpointing a potential crisis before it happens and implementing strategies in preparation, failure potential diminishes.

Identifying: Aggressively look for problems in their early stages when they omit weak signals. Face problems before they become a disaster. Many leaders put their heads in the sand and hope problems disappear. Rarely does that happen – they magnify.

Analyzing: When problems surface, trace symptoms to root causes. Avoid focusing on symptoms. Attack the cause and reduce the chances of a problem reoccurring – Total Quality Management (TQM).

Creating Options: Effective leaders assess situations carefully and accurately with open minds. Step outside your box, closely examine problems, and develop at least three possible solutions. Critically look at roadmaps from different positions (legal, financial, threats, logic, mission, strategic plans, and ethics) and perspectives (customers, community, shareholders, vendors, and staff).

Aristotle emphasized archers are more likely to hit the target if they know what they are aiming for. Determine your goal in the decision making process.

Weighing Odds: Build a culture where employees are encouraged to speak their minds in friendly, professional, respectful, and differing perspectives when examining pros and cons. Our philosophy at Columbia Conference Center and our other companies is “several heads joined always produce superior results.” We seek “win-win” customer-driven, team decisions.

When weighing different paths, don’t let destructive filters of greed, money, dishonesty, and bad ethics drive decisions. You may win battles, but lose the war. Remember Enron?

Making Right Choices: Many leaders procrastinate or fail to make a final decision – they fear failure. Eleanor Roosevelt remarked, “You gain strength, courage, and confidence when you look fear in the face.” Avoid making decisions when you are rushed, tired, angry, emotional, hurt, desperate, frightened, depressed, or sick. Make decisions for the right reasons when you are most capable of rational thought. I go through various learning and decision making modes on different days. I often briefly delay decisions to search for new perspectives and debate my own thoughts.

Seek advice from blunt experts who view situations without bias. Surround yourself with outstanding people who are smarter, more talented, and more experienced than yourself. Avoid employing staff who think like you. Engage staffs’ minds, hearts, and spirits in decision making to promote solution ownership. I like for my staff to view my ideas as only the beginning in problem solving. Consider differing opinions as gifts!

Avoid bias by not letting employees know your position in the early stages of debate. A killer of creative, quality dialogue is for leaders to tell staff, “This is what I think. Don’t you agree?” Successful leaders ask better questions which result in quality discussions. Tell yourself you don’t have all the answers. Arrogant, know-it-alls make poorer decisions because they only hear loud voices inside their heads. “My way or the highway” mentalities create cultures where intimidated staff want to “please the boss.” It’s best to check egos when making decisions. Collins in Good to Great determined, “Successful leaders are humble and give others the credit.”

Have a fall-back plan in case the first decision doesn’t work. Don’t put all your eggs in one basket.

Follow Jack Welch’s advice in Winning: “If you don’t feel good about a decision, don’t do it!” But, there will be tough times where nothing feels good where your choice is to pick between “no-win” bad or worse routes. These difficult times build character!

Executing Decisions: Once the decision is made, there should be no turning back unless new information surfaces -- charge full speed ahead. Second thoughts have aborted many wise decisions!

Evaluating Outcomes: Factually assess decisions -- understand what worked and didn’t. Once decisions are carefully determined faulty, immediately alter course. Develop a philosophy that mistakes and failures provide rich learning opportunities. Avoid pointing fingers or assigning blame. Bring mistakes into the open, no matter how embarrassing, for everyone to dissect, analyze, and learn. Use mishaps to build stronger, future decisions and teach good decision making skills.

If you’re making good decisions at least 50% of the time, you’re on the road to success. When you stumble: stop, pause, learn, and move to the next adventure. Great decision makers turn mistakes into wisdom and never look back!

Mike DuBose, a field instructor with USC’s graduate school, has been in business since 1981. He is the owner of six corporations, including Columbia Conference Center, Research Associates, and The Evaluation Group. Mike is writing his book “Building a Great Business,” to be released in late 2007.