As CEO, all of the big decisions land at your feet.
Business is just one big decision-making game.
Making fast, accurate decisions is just part of the job description.
Which is why it’s important to refine your decision-making ability.
The starting point is to accept that it’s impossible to get every decision right.
The billionaire Jimmy Goldsmith once quipped ‘I’ve been right 51% of the time and I’ve been wrong 49% of the time, but that 2% has made me a billionaire.’
And he could make complex, multi-million-dollar decisions faster than most people can decide what dish to choose on an unfamiliar restaurant menu.
His process was simple. When faced with a decision, he would dispatch his team to get all of the information needed to come to a decision, then gather them together and ask them one question …
‘If we do this, what’s the potential downside?’.
And if he could live with the downside, he’d do it.
Goldsmith knew that every decision he made wouldn’t work out.
His strategy was to avoid catastrophic failure, so he could stay in the game long enough to get enough decisions right.
What’s your decision-making process? And could ‘the downside question’ help you make faster decisions?