top of page
Search
  • Cy Tidd

Deciding? Ensure You're the Right Person to Do That.


We make decisions every day. Little ones. Big ones. Sometimes we make decisions that directly impact other people.

Before making the latter types of decisions, ask yourself three questions:

  1. Do I have the authority to make this decision?

  2. Should I delegate this decision?

  3. How much time do I have?

Do I have the authority to make this decision?

A couple of litmus tests for this:

  • "Will my boss be angry if I make this decision?"

  • "Will my peers ignore me if I make this decision?"

If the answer to either of those is yes, then the decision is not yours to make.

A note about the boss question: it doesn't matter if the decision falls within your sphere of control - if your employer-employee relationship didn't grant you the authority to execute meaningful decisions within that sphere, then it doesn't matter what the title on your nameplate says. For instance, if you've been hired to manage a team, and you've been told that you can't make hire-fire decisions, then you do not have the authority to discipline poor performers. You don't have the authority to promote or hand out bonuses for top performers, either. Those decisions are not yours to make.

The boss question also applies to significant others and family members. Anyone who has a stake in the decision's outcomes. Ignore them at your peril.

Once you've established that yes, you have the authority to make this decision, then ask:

Should I delegate this decision?

If you have subordinates, or are in a position to hire someone to offload this work, then use the Eisenhower Matrix.

Basically, decisions get stack ranked like so:

  • Urgent, important: You make the decision

  • Not urgent, important: You make the decision. Unless it's a good opportunity for a subordinate to stretch their wings, then delegate

  • Urgent, not important: Delegate

  • Not urgent, not important: Delegate.

Once you've established that, yes, you have the authority and you're the right person to make the decision, then ask:

How much time do I have?

The deadline here is really "at what point does someone, or something, make this decision for me?" This does not mean that you get a free pass to not make the decision. Once you've identified that you're the right person to make the decision, you must not delegate it away. You have the ball. You can't drop it. It's your responsibility. But you definitely want to know how much time you have to make it.

I can't remember who said this, but this stuck with me:

If it is not necessary to decide, it is necessary to not decide.

When someone comes to you and asks you to make a decision, you must not, if at all possible, make the decision right then. First, whether they mean to or not, the petitioner is likely looking for a decision favorable to them. Perhaps they need something right away to do their job. Maybe they're looking to remove an unexpected road block from a task. The point is, you're likely only going to get their perspective. If someone else is asking you to make a decision that impacts them, then you can bet your knickers that they'll bias their request in their favor.

If the request is your six-year-old asking for another cookie, then you don't need a lot of time to make that decision.

If you're in a leadership position and your decision affects many people, then understand the impacts. You owe it to each one of them to take all the time you have. Your decision could affect livelihoods and depending on your position - actual lives.

Recap

When confronted with a decision, ask three questions:

  1. Do I have the authority to make this decision?

  2. Should I delegate this decision?

  3. How much time do I have?

The questions frame the decision's scope. They identify training opportunities for your team. And finally, they help give you enough time to examine the edge cases and consider second order effects.


13 views

Recent Posts

See All
bottom of page