At the end of the year, I’d like to shift gears and not talk directly about leadership or onboarding. I would like to share some thoughts about decisions and decision-making.
I’ve had several conversations recently with people who have made significant choices in their lives. Not easy decisions; we all make easy choices all the time. Which TV to buy, whether to eat at Joe’s Pizza or Sushi Buni, how late to sleep. These are simple choices, reversible choices, ones that are out of your mind as soon as they are concluded. The people I spoke to were talking about the few really tough choices they have made at various points – to pick one career and walk away from another, to take a job or not; to get married, or get divorced; to move to a new town, or a new country. These were life-changing choices that put you on a path that has implications for years if not decades, choices that are very difficult to change or reverse.
Each person had made a major life choice, and knew that, had they made a different choice, their life certainly would have proceeded differently. In some cases it might have turned out better, at least by some criteria. And some of those choices were made for less than perfect reasons. One friend told me he decided in his senior year of college not to pursue medical school, not because of a rational analysis of the options, but because he didn’t want to spend that long in school. Had he been more thorough in his analysis, he would have learned that the course he chose (graduate school) took almost twice as long as medical school. Another friend chose to marry someone with a chronic illness, which resulted in several years of pain and loss that was, at times, agonizing for everyone close to them.
What made these conversations interesting was that none of the people I talked to had any regrets about these choices. They might wonder about the implications of the choice itself, and muse over what might have been different. But shat they all told me, each independently, was that the unfolding of their lives subsequently was so unique and invaluable that if they really could not consider the other path as a real option any more. If they thought seriously about the other choice, they would have to consider losing all of the things that make this path important: children, friends, experiences, possessions. They knew, without really having to force the thought, that choices are much more significant at the time you are making them than they are looking back. What is truly important is what happens after the choice.
I think good leaders know this intuitively. When confronted with a really difficult choice, they approach it with the best information and the clearest mind they can. They consider options and weigh the pros and cons. But in the end, they know that what they do with the choice they make is probably more important than the choice itself. The senior managers I have worked with take on the choice, own the choice, and push it forward with all their energy and passion. This is not to say that one cannot make bad choices. All of them (and all of us!) have made some doozies. What I am saying is that really effective leaders follow up a difficult choice with focus and intensity, and a clear understanding that the future will become something of value if they make it so.
May your choices in 2009 be wise, and your passion for those choices be boundless. Happy New Years to all, and talk to you on the other side of the year.
Bill Berman, Ph.D.
Managing Principal, Berman & Associates
Partner, PrimeGenesis
Director, APT, Inc.
