Tough decisions

I used to tell my first year university students that writing would always be hard. They would get better. They would get faster. Their standards would rise. They would seek more effectiveness. They would become more precise. Writing would not get easier. Writing would always be hard.

Decision making is like writing. It is always hard. We learn competence only to find our edge, again and again. We get better at some decisions. These become the easy decisions. The tough decisions do not become easy. The better we get at making decisions, the tougher the decisions we are called to make.

There are two kinds of tough decisions. In one, you know the right thing to decide and you know that someone will pay a price for your decision. This kind is tough because it is hard to pay the price - or hard to ask the price of someone else. The more you know about consequences, the more likely you are to find these kinds of decisions tough. Some people can only make tough decisions by refusing to count the cost. Some can only make tough decisions by pushing themselves to count the costs more accurately.

In the other kind of tough decision, you are presented with choices without knowing how to distinguish among them. You are compelled to make a decision knowing that you do not know. If you have experience, you know that sometimes you will be wrong in making these decisions. If you have experience, you will quite often be right about the decision, sometimes for the wrong reasons. This will be of little comfort in your next tough decision. You will know that you do not know.

The only thing worse than making tough decisions is refusing to make them.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The hypnotic contract

Under what conditions would you allow someone else to tell you what to think?   If you have watched a stage hypnotist, you have seen what looks like one person exercising remarkable control over the thoughts and actions of another. It is fascinating, in part, because we have all seen it happen in real life. Suddenly someone we know seems to be relying on someone else to do the thinking.  Even if the influence is good, it is a little frightening. The secret is that there are no magic words.  In order to lead someone into hypnosis, that person has to be willing to go there. Often the people you see on stage are more than willing. For whatever reasons, they are enthusiastic about giving up self control and allowing someone else to take charge. They know that there are limits to what can happen on stage and they are only agreeing to give up control within those limits. What you see in hypnosis is an agreement between two people. Like all agreements between human beings, it stretches as far...
Read more

Good with people

What do you think of when you hear the phrase "good with people?" When a wine is good with steak, it means that both the steak and the wine taste better when enjoyed together. If you are 'good with people' that could mean that both you and they perform better when you work together. "Good with people" should not be confused with charm or grace. Many famous leaders have, in the absence of any obvious charm or eloquence, managed to get people to produce at high levels. Some introverts fail to be influential; some extraverts fail to be effective. The most useful criteria for "good with people" is the performance that results when an individual is working with others: does the sum exceed the total of the parts? Or would they all have been better working from separate cubicles? We are entering the season of networking: it's a perfect time to observe the difference between the people who are working the room and the people who are making the room w...
Read more

The fine line between observations, suggestions and commands

I have been watching Tony Robbins this week in the documentary called " I Am Not Your Guru ." You can read a nicely ambivalent review in the Financial Times here.   I think the ambivalence is built into the process, which might be surprising given the loud celebration that characterizes the Date with Destiny in the film. For those of us whose work has evolved from NLP, there are lessons to be learned from modelling the most famous and successful practitioner of NLP (Robbins has far surpassed all the founders by all measures of success). Because he does so much so well, Robbins lets us see how fine the line is between observing and suggesting. Let me explain. Robbins frames his "interventions" both with the exercises and performances we do not see in the film and with his invitations. The film opens with an intervention with a young man who says he is suicidal; it is only later that we see Robbins say he is looking for someone who is suicidal to work with. Since...
Read more