The more decisions that have to go through you as a CEO, the more you become the bottleneck that limits your company’s growth.
You can start letting go of some decisions that you think only you can make by using heuristics.
In fact, once you start using heuristics you will actually be surprised at how few decisions you actually have to become involved with.
Think of heuristics as ‘positive’ rules or mental shortcuts that quickly help someone decide what to do next.
As human beings we all use heuristics in our day-to-day decision-making – it would be impossible to function if you had to think through every decision you are faced with by starting from scratch each time.
As a CEO you can delegate authority – saving time and brainpower for activities that really only you can do – by codifying your thinking into decision-making rules you can share with others.
If you’ve already created your vision and core values, then creating these heuristic decision-making rules should be relatively easy.
Because there should be a straight-line alignment between them …
Vision > Core Values > Heuristic Decision Making
Heuristic decision-making will breathe life into your core values by allowing your people at every level to actually ‘walk-the-talk’.
This is kind of important because it’s really only action that translates core values from ‘fine wordsmithing on an office poster’, into a realized vision.
You could put this to the test by examining the very next decision you are asked to participate in – and noticing how your decision is reflected in your core values.
And if it does, you can use that connection to develop a sharable rule for future decision-making.