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Autocratic Decisions

Guest post by: Eric Douglas

Article Overview: The easiest type of decision is autocratic: It’s a decision you make yourself.

Autocratic Decisions

The easiest type of decision is autocratic: It's a decision you make yourself. You pick out your shirt in the morning. You decide how to respond to your email. No one else gets involved. I divide autocratic decisions into two sub-types: • You make the decision by yourself using the information you have available,

• You obtain information from another person (or other people), and then decide by yourself.

Many decisions are autocratic, but they are also relatively trivial. What you eat for breakfast, where you park your car, the color of the socks you wear - these are decisions you make on your own. If you reflect on all the decisions you make during a day, you can appreciate how much of life is filled with autocratic decisions.

I can only think of three situations in which a leader should make important decisions in this manner: 1) when the decision is straightforward and you have all the information necessary - in which case you still need to communicate what you've decided and why; 2) when time pressure forces you to make the decision quickly - in which case you need to explain those circumstances to people who are affected; or 3) when there's an overarching imperative to maintain secrecy.

Leaders who want to build an organization capable of operating at light speed should not make important decisions autocratically. Instead, they need to use one of the other four processes.

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Article Tags: autocratic, autocratic decisions, decision making, decisions, leadership, management



Related Forum Posts
Re: Books for the Entrepreneur - I like "A Whole New Mind" by Daniel Pink, and "Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces that Shape our Decisions" by Dan Ariely.


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