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Trust Your Gut When Making Decisions

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This article is more than 9 years old.

You will make the best decision you can make.

That advice comes from a scene in the movie, 13 Days in October, about the Cuban Missile crisis. It was a time in 1962 when the United States and the USSR came about as close as they could to nuclear war.

In the movie recreation Kenny O’Donnell, de-facto chief of staff (played by Kevin Costner), has a conversation with President Kennedy (played by Bruce Greenwood) before Kennedy is to go on television. The scene closes with Kennedy asking O’Donnell if he thinks he is making the right decision. O’Donnell’s response is that he believes Kennedy is making the best decision he can.

The Soviets had put missiles into Cuba and when the intelligence showed their presence the Kennedy Administration together with U.S. military debated how to react. Hawks in the military wanted to bomb Cuba. Kennedy, distrustful of military brass since his days as a second lieutenant in the South Pacific during World War II, urged caution. For nearly two weeks the nation was kept in the dark but then Kennedy went on television to announce to the world that he was demanding that the Soviets remove the missiles immediately.

I have shared that lesson with many executives I have coached; and to a person all of them, particularly those facing big decisions, find comfort. Every leader wants to be right. All of the time. The savvy ones know they are fallible. Only fools fail to second-guess themselves.

Doubt, while annoying and irritating, can be a leader’s best friend. When a leader hesitates, pausing to consider the assumptions as well as the options, she is doing what the organization needs. A thoughtful leader. Too much hesitation leads to organizational paralysis. Deliberate thought, together with counsel from trusted sources, is prudent.

Leaders can only draw comfort from the “best decision” concept after they have done the prep work. Big decisions are seldom made on a whim; they must be pondered, debated and deliberated. Plans are then put into place so that people know how to implement the decision. Such prep work can take months or weeks and it can be painful to do. Then when the final decision is put before the boss he or she make the decision. And live with the consequences.

There will always be push-back. Some will second-guess a decision even when things go well. And if things go poorly, then people will point fingers. How a leader responds to the second-guessing is a measure of his ability to withstand pressure. Knowing in your heart that you made the best call you could make at the time forms a foundation for going forward.

We know with the hindsight of the history that Kennedy made the right call. The Soviets blinked and pulled out their missiles. [In return the U.S. removed missiles from Turkey a month or so later.]

While leader may take comfort from Kennedy’s decision-making he or she is not acting with the benefit of history. Leaders act on the information they have now, backed by the trust they have in people around them. Things worked out for the world post-Cuban Missile Crisis but for a leader deciding whether to sign off on a major deal, the start up of a new product, an investment in research, or even the selling of a product line, history is yet to be written.

The leader has only her gut to trust. And when she can look into the mirror and say she made the best decision possible at the time then that is all you can ask.

 

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