Seven Tips to Help Leaders Make Key Decisions
“The job of an entrepreneur, manager or CEO is to say, ‘We’re taking this fork in the road, for better or worse, and it’s on my head,’” says Michael Feuer, co-founder and former CEO of OfficeMax and author of the new book “The Benevolent Dictator: Empower Your Employees, Build Your Business, and Outwit the Competition.” “He or she is the one person who makes the important decisions when it counts.”
Feuer writes that sometimes it’s best to put consensus aside and “just do it.” He presents a leadership style—being a benevolent dictator—that combines an appreciation for consensus and the input of the team with the ability to recognize when debate, conversation and analysis can’t take you any further.
“When you’re an entrepreneur and a leader, make-or-break decisions are made on a daily basis,” says Feuer. “There’s just no way around it. When you lead as a benevolent dictator, you can move faster than the competition and save time, money and energy to capitalize on opportunities.” Here are a few tips from Feuer:
1. Learn to make quick decisions. “At OfficeMax, when we had to move from mind to market and implement must-make changes, I didn’t have the luxury of time to build consensus and sway everyone over to my position on what would work and what wouldn’t. Instead, I had to make many pronouncements that became gospel.”
2. Take emotion out of the equation, gather the facts, decide where you want to go and determine how to get there. “After OfficeMax’s first year, we’d actually grown nicely and were operating stores in Ohio, New York and Michigan,” says Feuer. “In hindsight, the key to that first year’s success was our ability to make on-the-run decisions rather than conduct lengthy analysis that would have meant waiting weeks—if not months—before taking the next step.”
3. Remember that leading benevolently means never having to say you’re sorry. Sometimes when leaders must take the initiative to quickly put their decisions into practice, they feel like the schoolyard bully. But, as Feuer explains, that’s where the benevolent side of your leadership must kick in. “A benevolent dictator style may sound autocratic at first, but when the emphasis is on the benevolent portion, meaning you’re doing what is right for the greater good, the odds for success move in your favor,” he says.
4. Avoid the b.s. People are willing to do just about anything for their leaders as long as the leader is honest about his or her intentions and avoids falling back on an excuse for why an employee’s idea wasn’t implemented or opinion not asked for.
5. Beware the desire for zero risk. “Some entrepreneurs and business leaders get stuck in analysis paralysis and consensus building in an attempt to have ‘zero risk,’” explains Feuer. “But since you’ll never be 100 percent guaranteed to succeed, you’ll be stuck studying, researching and consensus building in a circular fashion. At that point, analysis will become an excuse for continued delays.
6. Sleep on it. There will, of course, be decisions in your entrepreneurial career that require analysis and deep thinking. Often, the best way to work out these problems is to put your subconscious to work. “Soon after launching OfficeMax, I started thinking about some of my biggest challenges right before going to bed,” Feuer recalls. “I had read a lot about subconscious and subliminal thinking, and had determined that if I focused on a problem, my subconscious would help me come up with plans A, B, and C.
7. Learn to make decisions for the love of the company. When you do what is right for the company, not just to please this or that group, then you’re halfway there in making your undertaking work. “Decisions aren’t supposed to be easy, especially for leaders,” Feuer concludes.
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