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Decision-making vs. Decision-getting

Guest post by: Patrick T. Malone

Article Overview: “If you can’t get people committed to what you are trying to do, you can’t get it done.” Carly Fiorina, former HP CEO, October 12, 2009 More than ever before, these difficult economic times require efficient management and effective leadership. We believe that efficient management is all about “decision-making” while effective leadership requires the skill of “decision-getting”. Many expect our economy to turn around in the short term but what if it doesn’t? What if it gets worse over the next three + years. Do you and your organization have the skills to “get it done” in a worsening economy?

Decision-making vs. Decision-getting

"If you can't get people committed to what you are trying to do, you can't get it done."

Carly Fiorina, former HP CEO, October 12, 2009 More than ever before, these difficult economic times require efficient management and effective leadership. We believe that efficient management is all about "decision-making" while effective leadership requires the skill of "decision-getting". Many expect our economy to turn around in the short term but what if it doesn't? What if it gets worse over the next three + years. Do you and your organization have the skills to "get it done" in a worsening economy?

Your ability to get well informed committed decisions from others is the likely to be the difference between the success or failure of your business. Top performers throughout the world operate on that same insight. Namely, in order for buy-in to occur, confidence must be achieved-not merely logical understanding of ideas, solutions or technical benefits.

Nobel Prize-winning research in Economics, conducted by Herb Simon in 1976, supports this conclusion. The way people actually do business and make decisions is in a pursuit of comfort or confidence, whether or not logical cost-benefit-payoff is optimized!

The skill that sets top performers apart is the ability to do business with people in a way that causes mutual buy-in to some tangible action by the end of the conversation. This ability involves three major components that blend together as if they were a single skill.

The skill set is an explicit ability to:

• LISTEN

• CONNECT

• INSPIRE buy-in

This is not a soft, vague or incomprehensible ability. It is specific and measurable.

1. LISTEN: Exemplary performers accurately read emotions first, logical content second. Why? Because the only way you can tell whether or not buy-in is occurring is to see degrees of positive, neutral, or negative inclination during decision-making conversations. Willingness levels are different and logic is different depending on people's feelings about an idea. For example, we do not reason in the same manner when we are fearful as when we are open-minded or interested. Logic is not fixed. Instead, logic is relative to our willingness level or emotional state at any moment in time.

2. CONNECT: In business the ability to empathize is fairly useless without the logic to make a business connection. The hallmark of top performers is their ability to connect logic to the viewpoint of others. People recognizable for their ability to obtain buy-in and a following link logic to emotion all the time. It is a well-defined and measurable skill. It causes alignment, teamwork and concerted action.

3. INSPIRE BUY-IN: The ability to inspire others to see, hear and to feel higher, more positive points of view is the third skill element . . . and the payoff skill for leadership, teamwork, customer service, sales, or effective change agents.

This is the ability to lead conversations in increasingly more positive directions by linking logic to higher, more positive points of view. People who can do it get far more cooperation and tangible action from others. No one has succeeded in business as a change agent, leader, customer service or sales performer without this ability. It now can be developed to a higher level of conscious competence.

The above three-part skill set is the benchmark skill set of all successful people who demonstrate an ability to get committed customers in business. The skill set succeeds regardless of job title or job function (from boardroom to shop floor to customer premises) and regardless of type of product, service or industry. This is the skill that will allow your company to thrive in this difficult economy. So over the next few weeks I will explore each part of this skill in more depth.

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Article Tags: economic times, effective leadership, efficient management, worsening economy



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