Making Decisions Effective, Part 2 - One Action!

Hi guys, I'm so excited about these

Hi guys, I'm so excited about these podcasts! Thank you so much. Just wonder how I download the latest to my ipod. I can't seem to see a link to Itunes and it doesn't work from the itunes page for me either - I can't see the newest cast.
Anyway - I've been to 4 meetings today, took notes in all of them, so that I could gently double check what exactly has been decided and who would do what. Great progress for our organisation, we do meet a lot and the same issues keep coming up. Thank you!

Twitter makes you ineffective almost

Twitter makes you ineffective almost always…. NOT!!!!!!...

That was my attempt at humor with a ‘not’ joke… Tyson recently introduced me to the manager tools . It’s...

Driving to work this morning was not

Driving to work this morning was not like any other morning. It was not even like any other Monday morning when I usually get the latest podcasts in the car-speakers. I not only got the podcast but also THE Poem since my days as a confused teenage foreign exchange student in Michigan. The Road Not Taken still hangs on the wall at our house.
Somewhere in the middle of today's cast I started to think Robert Frost and when you announced it very slowly I said to myself that "He has to be thinking of The Road Not Taken"! And you were!!!

You have found even one more way to make me become a better leader! And for that I thank you!

Thank you Mike and Mark.
And thank you Bill Keur, Am Lit, Mona Shores High, Muskegon, Mi

We are honored to be mentioned

We are honored to be mentioned alongside a teacher whom you remember and respect.

It's a privilege to serve you.

Mark

Loved the cast guys. A few years ago I

Loved the cast guys. A few years ago I read some books on Harry S. Truman and found the philosophy that guides a lot of my decision making and your cast reminded me of it.

"All my life, whenever it comes to me to make a decision, I make it and forget about it. As President of the United States, you never have time to stop. You've got to keep going because there's always a decision ahead of you that you've got to make, and you don't want to look back. If you make a mistake in one of those decisions, correct it by another decision and go ahead. That's all you can do. "

I believe he also prefaced that at times by saying you had to act on the best information you had at the time. If the information was lacking or proved wrong, then you made a new decision once you learned more. Wise stuff.

HI Mike and Mark, enjoyed your

HI Mike and Mark,

enjoyed your podcast this morning, and appreciated the poetic finish!

For me there were a couple of link in this cast to a couple of related thoughts.

1) Many organistions are structured so that there is fear of making mistakes. We all grow by learning and part of this is mistakes. If we are able to make a series of controlled mistakes in our development then we have the skills to better analyse decisions. I see one of the key aspects of a manager is to allow their team members an environment when they can make the controlled mistakes and everyones development grows. Going back to Mike's analogy of driving the car and feed back of making lots of little adjustments. When we teach people to drive a car they do not have the finese for the small movements and often make large and dramatic changes of course. The driver teacher (very pale parent!) is there to catch and bring back on course hopefully before there is a crash.

2) You talked about the concept of killing of the alternatives, which I agree. Another aspect of many organisations is an unwillingness to kill projects or decisions that have gone ferral. I have been in the situation with clients where the organistion continues to pour millions of dollars in the programs that it has become obvious they will never work because of a fear to acknowledge that the world has changed, personal egos, the idea may have been flawed, or it has been poorly executed (or undermined). Managers need to have a killer instinct to kill of what they started if it is not going to succeed as early as possible, so that energy, effort and resources can be adjusted to other activities that are required to meet the objective. This may not, as you mentioned in your podcast option B, as we now have learnt a hell of a lot to this point.

3) The other thing I have learnt from adapting one of the psychodrama technique to business and use in my lectures is having made a decision, the task may seem huge, is to use the concept of the "first step". We have a picture of where we want to be, so the key task is to determine the first step on that path (a nice link into the poem), acheive that, then what is the second step, so on and so forth. The journey then become a relationship with what is immediately achievable on the pathway in fron of you, and hopefully you can enjoy some of the surroundings on the way!

kind regards
Jason Masters

The quote "If you come to a fork in the

The quote "If you come to a fork in the road, take it." is from Yogi Berra.

Another nice quote from him is "You've got to be very careful if you don't know where you're going, because you might not get there."
I used it to reply to a colleague of mine who argued with a decision I made but looked totally unsure of his own proposal. Next time he will think twice before trying to increase entropy. :-)

Alberto

Fabulous podcast and oh-so-helpful

Fabulous podcast and oh-so-helpful while almost guilt-inducing for we high C's who simply cannot let the unchosen option die...

I am well-known for researching airline ticket prices after buying tickets(!), harboring interest in alternative plans even after the choice was made, et cetera. Eesh, so a HUGE thanks for the kick in the rear. It is needed.

What a great touch - Robert Frost, my

What a great touch - Robert Frost, my favorite poet! It is a great poem with a great message. There is no crying in baseball, and there is no looking back when you have chosen which fork to go down.