{"id":7975,"date":"2023-12-05T05:40:26","date_gmt":"2023-12-05T11:40:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/scottcochrane.com\/?p=7975"},"modified":"2023-12-05T05:40:34","modified_gmt":"2023-12-05T11:40:34","slug":"4-ways-to-avoid-a-classic-leadership-decision-making-blunder","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/scottcochrane.com\/index.php\/2023\/12\/05\/4-ways-to-avoid-a-classic-leadership-decision-making-blunder\/","title":{"rendered":"4 Ways To Avoid A Classic Leadership Decision-Making Blunder"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Some of the worst leadership decisions take place simply because the wrong person made the decision.\u00a0<\/span><\/h2>\n

As a leadership mentor told me years ago, \u201cIf you\u2019re not clear who is supposed to make the decision, things will get very fuzzy, very fast.\u201d<\/p>\n

Several years ago\u00a0the organization I was with had partnered with another organization\u00a0to present a leadership conference.<\/p>\n

The schedule was set to go all day Friday and all day Saturday. But noticing that there was nothing scheduled on Friday evening, a leader from our partnering organization said we should program a concert for that time-slot.<\/p>\n

I disagreed.<\/p>\n

And there we stood; not sure who was supposed to make this decision. Neither one of us out-ranked the other. How were we to navigate this; flip a coin?<\/p>\n

Ultimately I deferred and allowed our partner to program a concert for that evening. It turned out to be a disaster. It was very poorly planned and executed.<\/p>\n

But the real learning happened Monday morning. The disaster had absolutely no lasting impact on our partner. But I was digging myself out of this mess for weeks afterwards.<\/p>\n

Because at the end of the day, the programming for the entire conference, including Friday evening, was my accountability. Not his.<\/p>\n

In every decision, only one person holds what I call the decision key. And if you want to avoid these kind of leadership disasters, here is what you need to know about the power of the decision key\u2026<\/p>\n

1.\u00a0<\/strong>Always be clear who holds the decision key<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Whoever is ultimately responsible makes the call.<\/p>\n

2.\u00a0 Remember that y<\/strong>ou can\u2019t share the key<\/strong><\/h2>\n

As I\u2019ve written before, there are no \u201cteam decisions\u201d<\/a>. One person makes the call, because one person is responsible.<\/p>\n

3.\u00a0<\/strong>Never give away the key<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Just because someone demands the key is no reason to give it up.<\/p>\n

4. Know that while k<\/strong>ey-holders should be collaborative, they ultimately stand alone when making the call<\/strong><\/h2>\n

At the end of the day, leadership is all about making decisions. But before you can make the call you need clarity on whose call it is to make.<\/p>\n

So take a lesson from my experience.<\/p>\n

Because when you know you hold the decision key, leadership doors start to open. And you can avoid those decision disasters.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Some of the worst leadership decisions take place simply because the wrong person made the decision.\u00a0 As a leadership mentor told me years ago, \u201cIf you\u2019re not clear who is supposed to make the decision, things will get very fuzzy, very fast.\u201d Several years ago\u00a0the organization I was with had partnered with another organization\u00a0to present…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":6739,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_bbp_topic_count":0,"_bbp_reply_count":0,"_bbp_total_topic_count":0,"_bbp_total_reply_count":0,"_bbp_voice_count":0,"_bbp_anonymous_reply_count":0,"_bbp_topic_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_reply_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_forum_subforum_count":0,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1018,7,585],"tags":[1044,984],"class_list":["post-7975","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-decisions","category-leadership","category-wisdom-2","tag-decisions","tag-leadership"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/scottcochrane.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7975","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/scottcochrane.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/scottcochrane.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scottcochrane.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scottcochrane.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7975"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/scottcochrane.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7975\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7977,"href":"https:\/\/scottcochrane.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7975\/revisions\/7977"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scottcochrane.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6739"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/scottcochrane.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7975"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scottcochrane.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7975"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scottcochrane.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7975"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}