Decision Time

My finger had pressure on the trigger, was I going fire the weapon or not? Were my actions going to save the lives of those around me, dispose of a threat or take an innocent life. This was decision I had to make - what do you do.

This was a real-life situation in Afghanistan. As the vehicle approached us, it was a 3 second call between pull or not. Luckily the vehicle slammed the brakes on, and the right outcome occurred, with no one dead. I still remember that day like it was yesterday, I can still feel that trigger pressure today and making that decision.

A 3 second decision was all I had. Now you could imagine the pressure in that exact moment, emotions vs logic battling inside my brain. Neuroscience outlines that emotions should win, but we had trained our limbic system (the emotional part of our brain that makes decisions) to ensure logic was followed even in the most trying times. Your life or theirs.

Now as you read this, hopefully you aren’t making the same decisions that I had to. But it’s not to say that you don’t feel the pressure and the emotional decisions leading the way in your business or work. Pulling you into a direction because the gut feel says so. I get it, because later I invested in retail stores and turned them around to be thriving, and the emotions that run through a retail store can be intense.

But you would be surprised at how many people face this in business. We all feel the weight of emotions ruling us, that’s because we’re emotional creatures at heart. But business is a bully and requires our approach to be logical to get the best outcome.

Ultimately whether we like it or not the numbers don’t lie, that’s why we have a staggering 90% business failure rate and 70% project failure rate. Instead of following a best practice, or a proven strategy, we tend to stagger off and follow our gut.

This isn’t a failure, it’s purely how we’re wired to think and act, without logic as the one behind the wheel and in control. There’s nothing wrong with failing, as it’s growing but we need to recognise what occurred and where did it go wrong as to not make that mistake again.

There are several tactics that can be used to improve our decision making:

? Train decision making

? Take into the context of the decision!

? Is the risk/threat real or simply perceived or probabilistic?

? A decision log with a self-review

? Asking ourselves if we have the data driving our approach or is it gut feel.

? Placing a deliberate pause on decisions before proceeding

It’s using the techniques listed above that gets us to be just a little bit better. We get to learn and review ourselves, accept that failure occurs and we’re working on it. We get to be proactive in helping ourselves and those we serve for a better outcome.