Making the call

We've all seen that movie. Something's happening under incredible pressure, sometimes a life or death decision that impacts many, many people, and suddenly, somehow, the person who happens to be in proximity to the action becomes the decision maker, having never been officially given the job, permission, nor the training. Turn left, cut the wire, push the blue button. The humanity depends on you.

Most of us don't deal with that kind of dramatized pressure or life or death decisions at work, but many of us have been in situations in which you must think on your feet, and make the call with imperfect amount of information, lots of opinions, but no clear winner of a decision. What did you do? How did you go about thinking through your decisions and actions? What was the outcome of your decision, and what did you learn from it?

But even that is a rare and unique situation—something that happens a few times in your career in which you will learn a ton about yourself. Most of the time you are actually more ready than you think you are; and if you aren't, don't let go of the opportunity to reflect and examine why that might be the case, and what you can do to be more ready next time, when there is a next time. For me, the biggest thing I learned about myself from those moments in my career is that by having to be the one to make the call, it forced me to think through the possible scenarios, consequences, and implications as mine to own. That's a scary process, but one that is also incredibly clarifying and empowering.

Now, imagine practicing this on an everyday basis, no matter how small or minor the scope or decision may feel like. I'm not talking about just acting and pretending like someone in charge, but using the process required to make a sound decision and mobilizing a lot of people who are counting on you. A few things start to connect:

• It forces you to think about how your work connects to other people's work. For example, how a decision to sunset one feature might impact the user experience for another part of the product that is connected, or how a decision to address a near-term problem with an interim technical solution might actually create a bigger infrastructure issue to deal with later, or how a decision to say one thing about your product might contradict something else the business has been working hard to establish as a part of its positioning.
• It forces you to think about what happens weeks and months from now. For example, how shipping one product feature this month might get something off your plate so you can move onto the next thing, but if you waited until next quarter, could you tell a bigger story around a series of features that all deliver greater value together? If I want to build towards a certain outcome, how do I plan backwards, and what needs to be explored now so that I can unlock each step towards the full step-by-step? What else is possibly going on during that quarter internally or externally that I need to be mindful of?
• It forces you to own the decision vs. just being another person with what might be a well-educated and -informed opinion. Opinions alone don't make a decision. Having a point-of-view with a plan to deliver on it does. Thinking like someone who has to deliver on the full end-to-end plan puts you into the mindset of someone who is ready to be held accountable to the results and outcomes, whether they go well or not. And more importantly, if you are the one who's thinking about all of this before anyone else, you get in the habit of owning your own accountability, instead of waiting for someone else to tell you.

Last but not least, it forces you to be ready to make the call when you weren't planning on it, especially when things change. Making no decision at all, especially when we are not intentional about the potential implications of doing so, is worse than making a call knowing what risks or benefits you're weighing, and how you will keep choosing your "adventure" forward from there. Next time you're a part of a project or an initiative in which you contribute towards a group effort or outcome, I'd highly encourage you to try practicing these skills. Thinking and acting as though you've got to make the call is one of the most tangible and everyday ways to develop and cultivate leadership skills.