The art of not knowing everything and realizing expertise has expiration!

Once we gather few year of experience and have reached Mid? to Senior management level, we all assume roles that requires you to make decisions that impact process, products and most importantly People.

Someone once said decisions making as such is not difficult, but making the right ones is.

The secret of making right decision every time is to not to beat yourself up when you make the wrong ones. You learn over the time and wise remember to never stop learning.

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5 commandments to make right decisions.

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1. Remember you are only a facilitator of the decision-making process the decision will be made with or with out you. Your job is to bring right people to the table.
2. Don’t be a data hoarder, data not shared is equal to data lost. If you take pride in being custodian of data and make it difficult for others to access. Over period of time people only look at you for data and not for your insights.? Don’t cripple your organization by keeping data to yourself.
3. Its ok to say “I don’t know”, over the years? each one of us is guilty of saying “I have been doing this over 15 years and? i know how it works”. ?Right now, pause and repeat that statement slowly, “I have been doing this for 15 years” and now add the following words to it “may be my taught process is a 15 years old”. The day your realize it, is the day you start making progress. Remember your 15 years of experience is any day less compared to the collective 100 year of experience in the room. Respect others expertise before you flaunt yours.
4. Flamboyance has no place in healthy organization, if you come across too sure about yourself, your team will stop opening up to you. They fear to be shot down and you lose 100% of what your team can contribute.
5. Always remember your expertise has come from the limited exposure you had in the industry you worked and the leaders you learned from, it’s wise to remember you have not done it all. World is much larger and best of the learnings come from most unconventional paths.

Next time when you have to make a decision or influence one, don’t make it based on what you know, make it based on what your team knows. It may not be the easiest thing to do, but it is the right thing to do !!!