- We know the quality of your decisions determine the quality of your life. The problem is most of us are
not great decision-makers. So as we launch into a new year, my goal is to help set you up for the best year of
leadership impact ever. To do so, we'll devote
the next two teachings to the art of strategic decision-making. (bright upbeat music) As we start a brand new year, if you could work on one thing to help you grow in your leadership, there is a skill that I'd suggest
you put high on your list. I'm calling it the Art of
Strategic Decision-Making. Why do your decisions matter so much? Because the quality of your decisions determines the quality of your life. The problem is that many of us are not great decision-makers, right? What do we do? Well, we eat more than we should. We decide to buy things we can't afford. We waste time, we procrastinate. We say things we regret. We end up making permanent decisions based on temporary emotions. Because this is such an important subject, we're gonna devote two episodes to help you develop your
decision-making muscles. And on a side note, I wrote an entire book on this subject called "Think Ahead, Seven
Decisions You Can Make Today For the Life You Want Tomorrow". What are we gonna do? We're gonna cover the eight factors of great decision-makers. It will take us two
episodes to cover all eight. Let's start with the first one. The first of the eight factors
of great decision-makers. Number one, I would suggest to develop your decision-making muscles. Number one, avoid either-or scenarios as often as possible. As often as you can, when
someone comes in and says, "Hey boss, should we do this or that?", and they give you two options. As often as possible, expand the options. Avoid either-or scenarios, because the truth is there are
rarely ever only two options. And the challenge is
whenever you're boxed in, you often miss multiple
other or better ideas. For example, someone comes in and says, "Hey, should we add a
new staff member or not? Should we fire this
underperforming leader or not? Should we start a new
church campus or not?" Well, they give you two options, and I would say avoid either-or options as often as possible. Expand your options. For example, if they say, "Should we add a new staff member or not?" You can ask 'em additional questions. For example, like, "Well, what if we," instead of an either-or, "What if we maximized
another two team members that are currently on the team who have margin to add more value?" Or if you're in a
nonprofit, you might say, "Well, what if we
utilize more volunteers?" Or you might say, "Okay, hey, instead of adding
one staff member or not, what if we added two part-time roles? Or what if we outsource this and used that strategy instead?" If they say, "Should we fire this
underperforming leader or not?" Before you try to answer
that question, I would ask, "Are you clear on why that
leader is underperforming?" For example, if you understand
why they're underperforming, there might be a problem at home and you could actually help that leader become better not only in the role, but better at home with
providing counseling. Or maybe she's a leader
that's under-resourced and doesn't have what she needs
to be good at what she does. Or maybe he's a good player,
but he's in the wrong role. If you move him to a different team, he might do even better. Don't get stuck in the either-or. If you're in ministry leading a church and we say, "Should we
add a new campus or not?" Well, let's expand the options. We could say, "Well, maybe
could we add another service where we are currently
and then another one and then another one,
and then another one? Or could we do another service in another part of the building before we had add a whole new campus? Or could we beef up our
online ministry impact? Or could we partner with another church and use their building
on a Saturday night?" Or we might say, "You're
actually thinking too small. Why would you just add one campus? Maybe you'd need to
add three and not one." So what are we gonna do? To really become better decision-makers, as often as possible, number
one, avoid either-or scenarios. The second factor is this. Number two, I would suggest that you decide when
you're going to decide. Decide when you're going to decide. And here's what I know about
most leaders, including me. We tend to put off whatever is not easy. If we have a difficult decision to make, we tend to procrastinate that,
some of you're so good at it, you've got the spiritual gift
of procrastination, right? What do we know about procrastination? Well, procrastination is the
number one enemy of progress. And we've all done this. We have a decision to
make, and it's not easy. So we tend to put it off and it's almost in our mind like we're pretending it's
gonna get easier to make later, or we're pretending it's gonna go away. So what do we do? We wait. And we have to remember, please hear this, no decision is a decision. Let me say it again, because
you gotta believe this. No decision is a decision. I'll give you a different way to think about
procrastinating just for fun. If you're going to procrastinate, because sometimes you will, I'm gonna suggest that you
procrastinate on purpose. What do I mean by this? This isn't passively
delaying your decision. This is actively and intentionally
holding your decision for what I would call a
designated decision time. You're not just procrastinating because you don't wanna get to it. You're actually
procrastinating on purpose. And I'll explain. Chances are, as a leader, you probably have some
form of a to-do list. "Here's all the stuff that I have to do." I would suggest that you also
create not just a to-do list, but also a to-decide list. Why do you want a to-decide list? Because most of us, what do we do? We keep the decisions that
we need to make in our head. They're all up in our brain and something happens when
we record them on paper or on your phone or online. It essentially, it frees your brain. Now, your brain isn't
subconsciously processing it and holding the decision I've
gotta make and on and on. It's keeping me awake at night. But you've put it down
somewhere, it's recorded. And then just as you have a scheduled time for so many different things, you might have a scheduled time for one-on-one meetings
with your top leaders, or you've gotta scheduled
time to brainstorm, or you've got a scheduled
time to make your sales calls. I would suggest that you schedule
a decision-making meeting with yourself or with whoever
you need to make the decision. So what do I do? Unless I have to make a
decision in the moment, I save all of my decisions until Thursday. Why Thursday? The reason is because my top priority is preparing the message
that I preach on the weekend, and I want my mind cleared
of the weight of the message that I'm preparing early in the week. And I'll make my decisions as often as possible on the same day. Now, you know your rhythms, and they're gonna be
very different from mine. Maybe your mind is clearer early in the week or early in the day. So you might wanna make your
decisions early Monday morning. Others of you, you wanna
have certain tasks done, so you wanna make your
decisions later in the day or later in the week when your mind space is finally freed up. So for me, late in the week works best. And what happens is my
assistant comes in with a stack, a bulk of decisions to make. Now, what does this do? By bulking the decisions together, so we have a decision-making time. What we do is I'll make one decision and suddenly it seems to become easier to make the next decision. What are we doing? We're creating what I
call decision momentum. When I make one decision, I
feel two things immediately. What do you feel when you finally
make a difficult decision? You feel both relief and you feel some form of confidence like, "Ah, I made one," and,
"Ah, I made one," right? And so after making one, it seems like the next one
comes a little bit easier. So not only will I designate or block off decision-making time, but occasionally what I'll do is I'll define what I
call artificial deadlines. What would that be? It's a deadline, but
it's not a real deadline. It's a self-imposed deadline. In other words, I may not need to make a
decision for two weeks, but instead, what I'm doing is I'm committing to make this decision by Thursday at 2:00 PM. Now, why would I do this? Why would I decide early? I've heard some people teach this. They'll say, "Wait until the very last
possible minute to decide, wait until you absolutely have to decide." I would suggest that's
not the wisest approach for many reasons. One of the big reasons is because the weight of unmade decisions slow your progress. Your mind just gets stuck and
you feel the ongoing pressure. And what do we know
about holding decisions and slow decision-makers? We know this. That you'll never see a
fast-growing organization led by slow decision-makers. Let me say it again. You will never, ever see a fast-growing high impact organization led by slow decision-makers. Now, I'm not telling you to be impulsive. I am telling you to be decisive. So here's a strategy. We're gonna bulk decisions. When we do, that will hopefully create
some decision momentum. Then we're gonna keep decisions flowing, so progress flows as well. And you may say, "But Craig, I'm not sure about what decision to make. I'm just not quite 100% sure." And I would suggest to you that if you wait until you're 100% sure, you'll likely be too late. So the eight factors, number one, we're gonna as often as possible
avoid either-or scenarios. Number two, we're gonna
decide when to decide. Number three, I'm gonna suggest that you become your own personal advisor, that you become your own advisor. And I do this often, I'll
be stuck on something and I simply can't make a decision. So what I'll do is I'll
pretend that someone else is asking me advice about the very thing that
I'm trying to decide. Why does this work? Why is it an effective strategy? Because looking at your situation from someone else's perspective, it separates your emotions
from the situation. What happens? We become emotionally attached. We're too close to certain decisions, because we care so much. And so let's say there's a team member that just hasn't been effective. And so this team member
moved from one role. You moved into another,
you moved into another, they've been in three different roles where you're trying to help them succeed and they're still not succeeding. And you can't decide, "What
do I do with this person?" So I might say, "Well,
if someone else asked me, 'What do I do with a team member that's been moved three times? I can't decide what to do,'
what would I tell them?" I would tell them there's
a common denominator. And that is that this team
member isn't thriving anywhere. And so you have a problem with an underperforming team member that hasn't succeeded anywhere. And then I would tell them, you
gotta deal with the problem. And if you don't deal with the problem, then that team member's
no longer the problem. You're now the problem. All of a sudden there's clarity. I love this team member. I want them to succeed, I'm trying. I'm too emotionally attached. If I separate myself from the emotions and start to advise myself,
it gives me clarity, it gives me more objectivity. So to advise yourself,
there are two really, really good questions that you could ask. The first question you could ask is one Andy Stanley
teaches and that is this. You're gonna ask yourself, "What would a great leader do? In a situation like this,
what would a great leader do?" And this is a very effective
question you could ask in your parenting or in your relationships or other decisions, "What
would a great mom do?" Or, "What would a great husband do?" Or, "What would a great
follower of Jesus do? What would a great leader do?" The second question is
very effective as well. And that is this. "What would my successor do? If someone else took over
my role from the outside and they came in and faced this situation, what would my successor do?" What do these questions do
to help you move forward? They do two things. Number one, they elevate your perspective. And number two, they help
compartmentalize your emotions. They're separating you from the emotions. They're elevating you above the situation, and they will help give you
clarity to make your decision. So what are we gonna do? Number one, as often as possible, we avoid either-or scenarios. Number two, we're gonna
decide when to decide. Number three, I'm gonna suggest you become your own personal advisor. Now we're gonna group
four and five together. Number four, I suggest you delegate as many
decisions as possible. And number five, increase
your tolerance for mistakes. Delegate as many decisions as possible, and increase your tolerance for mistakes. Let's talk about the first one, delegate as often as you can. And you might say, "Now, wait a minute. Isn't delegating decisions risky?" And the answer is absolutely, it is. Yes, I'm not gonna lie to you. In the short run, delegating
important decisions to inexperienced decision-makers is risky. But lemme tell you what's way more risky. In the long run, it is way more risky not to delegate decisions today. Why? Because if you don't delegate decisions, you won't develop leaders. If you're the only one who can
make most of the decisions, then here's a promise to you. Your need to control will become your greatest limiting factor. Lemme say these things again. If you don't delegate decisions, you will not develop leaders. And your need to control will become, and for some of you, this
is where you are today. It is your greatest limiting factor. So if we're delegating decisions, if we're trusting other people to make very important decisions,
that raises the question, how many decisions should the leader make? How many decisions should
you make as a leader? And before I answered that question, I'd ask you a couple of questions, and I'd ask you, first of all, how big of an organization
do you want to lead? And secondly, how big of a
difference do you want to make? Because if you wanna
lead a big organization with great leaders and
you wanna make a very real and significant big difference, then how many decisions do you wanna make? And the answer is you wanna make as few of decisions as humanly possible. You say, "Okay, Craig, I'm with you. Walk me through this. How do I delegate a decision to someone who's an
inexperienced decision-maker?" Let's go back to the previous idea. To delegate more decisions, we must increase our
tolerance for mistakes. We talked about that. If we're gonna delegate more decisions, we have to increase our
tolerance for mistakes, because people may make
some wrong decisions. And you may say, like, "Why in the world will we have
any tolerance for mistakes? Don't we wanna avoid all mistakes?" And the answer is
actually, we really don't. Why? Because you know you can't grow anything if you don't take risks. And if you take risks, you also know that you
won't always succeed, right? So we say this all the time. If you wanna take risks,
you must tolerate mistakes. It's not like we're
looking to make mistakes, but we have to have a
tolerance for mistakes. And here's what happens. You're the leader, and because you're the leader, you care, and because you care, you
don't wanna make a mistake. And so you feel the weight, because you've got lots of decisions, you've got lots of pressure. And so you wait, you
put off your decisions, you analyze and you stall. This is actually a very
significant problem. I would say this. Many leaders overestimate the
risk of making a bad decision and underestimate the cost
of making no decision. Let me say this again. You get, please internalize this. Many leaders, they overestimate the risk of making a wrong choice, a bad decision, and they underestimate the
cost of making no decision. So if you think you're the only one who can really make wise decisions, you're both overestimating yourself and you're underestimating
the people around you. You honestly, you think
you're more important than you really are, and you're undervaluing the
valuable leaders around you. So we know this, delegating decisions is actually one of the best
tools to develop leaders. To be clear, and I wanna
just be very, very clear, delegating decisions is
different than delegating tasks. What's the difference? When we delegate a task, you're giving someone an assignment, but when you're delegating a decision, you're giving someone authority. And again, what is the difference? Let's drive and drill in on this. Delegating tasks develops followers, but delegating authority develops leaders, and there's a massive difference. Again, Andy Standy teaches
on this subject, and he says, and I like this, he says, "Two
of the most important words in your leadership vocabulary
would be these two words." Are you ready? The words are this. "You decide." You decide. As often as possible, someone walks into your office, says, "Hey boss, what
should we do about this?" As often as you can, one of your best leadership
development tools is to say, "You decide. You choose. What do you think?" And you delegate the decision. What I've done is worked on this for years and years and years, and I've delegated more decisions than you could ever imagine, from small things to really big things. I mean, the smallest things
like what I'm gonna eat to even someone help me
with what I'm gonna wear, to titles of messages,
someone else will help decide, to big things like where specifically we're gonna put a new campus or what the building's gonna look like, all the way down to hiring of the staff. I still care, but I trust
our team to be involved. And to be clear, in the early
years, I did everything. I did it all, everything, everything, everything, everything. But as the organization
grows, your goal is to do less and empower more, do
less and empower more. Why do you do less and empower more? Because your importance isn't a reflection of what
happens in your presence, but what happens in your absence. Now you're gonna say,
"Okay, but what if it fails? What if it doesn't work?" And the answer is,
sometimes it's gonna fail. Sometimes it's not gonna work. And when it does, remember, we have a big tolerance for error, because we have a big appetite for growth. Sometimes falling short is the price you pay
for going big over time. Now, one more quick word, and
you have to remember this. You're still the leader. The buck still stops with you. You have to remember, you
can delegate authority, but you can't delegate responsibility. You can delegate authority
to make the decision, but ultimately, you still have to oversee and take responsibility for whatever happens
underneath your leadership. So even though you're trusting
someone else to decide, you still wanna do everything
possible to help them succeed. Why? Because the potential of your organization is a reflection of the
quality of its leaders. Now, before we wrap up, I've
got really good news for you. There is so much to learn on this subject that I've recorded an
exclusive bonus episode called Discovering Your
Decision-Making Style. This is free only for those of you in
our leadership community, and I'm gonna tell you about the content. Based on my research,
there are five specific and different styles of decision-making. Most of you, you'll have a dominant style and you'll have a secondary
decision-making style. What are the five styles? I give 'em to you briefly. There is the lone wolf, the
researcher, the includer, the consensus builder, and the intuitive. What I wanna do is I
wanna help you discover your decision-making style. I wanna help you understand
the strength of your style, and I wanna help you understand and manage the weaknesses of your style. Then I'm gonna help you
create a very specific plan to grow the art of your
strategic decision-making. How do you get this episode? If you're currently receiving our emails and you already get the leader guide, then you'll automatically receive this exclusive bonus episode. If you don't, here's all you do. Go to life.church/decisionstyle. Life.church/decisionstyle, all one word, and you'll get the free bonus to learn about your decision-making style, so you'll be ready for part two teaching as we move forward. I'll say again, on the first
Thursday of next month, we'll release part two
of the eight factors of great decision-makers. If this content is helpful,
please invite others to be a part of our leadership community. Share on social media and
hey, here's a new year, new opportunities to make
a very big difference. So let's invest in your own leadership. Let's get better, more passionate, sharpen your own leadership tools, because everyone wins when
the leader gets better. (bright upbeat music)
