How to make decisions when you don’t know enough about the topic or the case? — Part 1

Hello my friend, welcome to The Leadership Tip of the Week. Today I want to talk about how to make decisions when you don’t know enough about the topic.

It could be that you are new to the job or simply that you just don’t know enough about the question you are being asked.

So, what do you do? Do you just ignore the question hoping that it will go away? Do you let other people in your team, or your manager decide? Do you pass it on to high paid consultants who often don’t know themselves about the specificities of your organisation? How do you decide when you don’t know enough about the topic?

I know many of us struggle with that, and I did as well. Because you could think as the leader, you must know everything, and you must have an answer for every question. But this is not true. Your role as the leader is not to give all the answers. However, when its upon you to make the final choice, you can’t run away from your responsibility. You must decide. How do you do that?

There is a three-step strategy that helped my tremendously that I want to share with you. Today I will cover the first step, and next week we will cover step 2 and 3:

- Step #1: Create the space for reflexion but set a clear deadline by when you will decide. And communicate this to your team so they know when to expect your decision. This is a very important step because you don’t want to rush as you don’t know much yet and at the same time you don’t want to wait too long and miss an opportunity or expose your organisation to greater risks.

We’ve seen over the past two years that while none of us and experience of dealing with a global pandemic of this magnitude, some organisation reacted swiftly and made important decisions that allowed them to strive during that time.

This is the Leadership Tip of this week. When you need to make decisions and you don’t know enough about the topic or the case, start by setting a deadline to decide. You don’t want to rush to conclusion and at the same time you don’t want to delay things for too long.

Next week I will share with you step 2 and step 3.

Until then, take responsibility for everything that happens to you and be committed to serving others. That’s how you become and remain the leader everybody trusts and respects.

Written by Maxime Yao. Extract from episode #1 of The Leadership Tip of the Week.