Tips for business decision making

“I have missed more than 9,000 shots in my career. I have lost almost 300 games. On 26 occasions I have been entrusted to take the game winning shot, and I missed. And I have failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is precisely why I succeed.”

— Michael Jordan

When we think of Michael Jordan, we think of heroics. We remember dominating performances, NCAA championships, NBA championships, Olympic gold medals, and possibly the best player to ever pick up a basketball. 25 times during his college and professional career he made the game winning hoop in the waning seconds of the contest. But as he alludes to above, he has had numerous failures including 26 instances where his teammates were counting on him to hit the game winner and he missed. Why does a part-time CFO mention all of this in a blog on business decision making?

Because no matter how good a business owner is at decision making, some decisions will prove to be wrong. Failure? Hardly. Its just part of the process, as Michael Jordan teaches us above. So get over the fear of making wrong decisions. It will happen, and if you let them, wrong decisions and other failures will lead to growth and future success.

Maybe you think the above is just a bunch of shallow, trite “jock-talk” from this part-time CFO. You want some specifics as to what to do when there is a difficult decision to make, and you just can’t decide which way to go. Fair enough. Let’s set Michael and the jock-talk aside for the moment and consider what substantive methodology gives rise to good business decision making. My advice would be to turn to Stephen R. Covey and The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. He tells us in Habit 2 to “begin with the end in mind.” Most difficult business decisions can be answered by asking how the decision will impact what your business will eventually look, feel, touch and taste like. This is especially important when making Exit Planning decisions (see my prior blogs on this subject).

Beginning with the end in mind will normally give clarity of thought and allow for prudent decision making that will have positive and lasting effects on your business. Will this methodology be infallible? No way. But it does provide a good framework from which you can be right a good percentage of the time. Maybe you can achieve the success ratio logged by Michael Jordan during his career as described above. It wasn’t even close to perfect, but he was able to live with it,  and it was way good enough to get him into the NBA Hall of Fame.