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 [Music] making 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' 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 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 going to devote two episodes to help you develop your decision-making muscles and uh on a side note I wrote an entire book on this subject called think ahead seven decision ision you can make today for the life you want tomorrow what are we going to do we're going to 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 uh 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 is often as possible expand your options for example if they say should we add a new staff member or not you can ask them additional questions for example like well what if we instead of an either or what if we maximize ized 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 outsourced this and used that strategy instead uh 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 underresourced 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 uh 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 going to 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 are 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 going to get easier to make later or we're pretending it's going to 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 got to you got to believe this no decision is a decision uh 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 going to suggest that you procrastinate on purpose what do I mean by this U 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 want to get to it you're actually procrastinating on purpose and I'll explain uh chances are as a leader you probably have some form of 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 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 freeze your brain now your brain isn't subconsciously processing it and holding the decision I've got to make it keep keep 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 got a scheduled time to brainstorm or you've got a scheduled time to make your sales calls I would suggest that you schedule a decisionmaking 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 preached 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 going to be very different from M um maybe your mind is clearer early in the week or early in the day so you might might want to make your decisions early Monday morning others of you you want to have certain tasks done so you want to 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 oh 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 p.m. now why would I do this why would I decide early I I've heard some people teach this they'll say wait until the very 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 you you feel the ongoing pressure and what do we know about holding decisions and slow decision makers we know this that you will 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 am not telling you to be impulsive I am telling you to be decisive so here's a strategy we're going to bulk decisions when we do that will hopefully create some decision momentum then we're going to 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 will likely be too late so the eight factors number one we're going to as often as possible avoid either or scenarios number two we're going to decide when to decide number three I'm going to suggest that you become your own own personal advisor that you become your own adviser 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 uh emotionally attached we're 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 ask 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 got to deal with a problem and if you don't deal with a problem then that team member is no longer the problem you're now the problem all 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 going to 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 can ask in your parenting or in your relationships or other decisions what would a great mom M 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 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 going to do number one as often as possible we avoid either or scenarios number two we're going to decide when to decide number three I'm going to suggest you become your own personal advisor now we're going to group four and five together number four I suggest 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 going to lie to you in the short run delegating important decisions to inexperienced decision makers is risky but let me 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 let me say these things again if you don't delegate decisions you will not develop leaders and your need to control will be coming 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 want to lead a big organization with great leaders and you want to make a very real and significant big difference then how many decisions do you want to make and the answer is you want to make as few of decisions as humanly possible you said 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 going to 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 would we have any tolerance for mistakes don't we want to avoid all mistakes and the answer is actually we we really don't why because you know you can't grow anything if you don't take risks and if you take risk you also know that you won't always succeed right so we say this all the time if you want to 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 want to make a mistake and so you feel the weight because you've got lots of decisions you 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 want to 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 sty 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 hey boss uh what should we do about this as often as you can one of your best leadership development tools is to say um 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 going to eat to even someone help me with what I'm going to wear to titles of messages someone else will help decide to big things like where specifically we're going to put a new campus or what the building's going to 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 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 going to say okay but what if it fails what if it doesn't work and the answer is sometimes it's going to fail sometimes it's not going to 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 want to 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 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 want to tell you about the content uh 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 them to you briefly there is the Lone Wolf the researcher the includer the consensus Builder and the intuitive what I want to do is I want to help you discover your decision-making Style I want to help you understand the strength of your style and I want to help you understand and manage the weaknesses of your style then I'm going to 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 receive this exclusive bonus episode if you don't here's all you do go to life. church slis style live. Church decision style 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