This month’s question:

What is the right balance of head, heart and guts as a decision maker?

I know what I am about to run through will look like I am not prepared to give a definitive answer to a great question. I don’t want it to look that way, but too some it might. The reason being; that in my opinion there is no set standard of balance between Head, Heart and Guts when it comes to decision making or anything else for that matter.

However, I do believe it is important that all three become part of any decision making process. Ultimately though, the right balance will depend upon many different considerations.

Considerations such:
The situation
The outcome
The influences
Available information
Level of risk

On the other side of the ledger you would need to consider:
Your personality
Your leadership style
Your vision and focus
Your experience
Your levels of understanding
Your past decision making process

As you can see there are numerous factors that would need to be considered in the process or structure of your decision-making. However, there is also an opportunity, and in many cases, a real and relevant need to include the aspects of Head, Heart and Guts.

Now with that stated, I would also suggest the idea of a weighted scale that allows you to use all three elements of Head, Heart and Guts, but to what amount of each would depend upon the appropriateness of each area, as their relevance, significance and appropriateness will vary from decision to decision.

The reality is that you will operate from a different perspective in your decision making depending on a wide a variety of considerations, not to mention pressures, levels of clarity, understanding and information processing. One cannot use the same style of decision making every day. The need for diversity of approach changes moment-to-moment, situation-to-situation, and decision-to-decision.

We can always do better as decision makers, whether it is professionally or personally. But as you continue to develop yourself, your thinking, your understanding, and therefore your decision-making, it is vitally important to stay true to yourself.

Each and every decision you make must have your DNA attached. It should be easy for anyone influenced by the decisions you make to see you in how the decision has been reached and why.

They may not always agree with your decision, but their level of unease is somewhat reduced, simply because they can see your consistency of approach in the decision that has been made and through the process that led you to the decision.

As a leader of people, each and everyday you will be placed in the position of chief decision maker and those decisions need to be made based on some type of criteria.

Many times that criteria is developed through your past experiences, it is aided by a system or structure, or it can be helped by the information you have available.

I would also suggest emotion to some degree will be involved in your decision-making procedure.

The skill is not to remove or ignore the emotion, but to truly understand the level of emotion involved and its ability to influence you.

You should have a sense of understanding about you and your tendencies towards the emotional aspects of decision-making. That understanding at the very least is to guard against your own worst tendencies.

Let’s look at it this way. If you’re over optimistic, you’re likely to gloss over the threat of things going wrong. If you’re pessimistic, you might have a tendency to dwell on the negatives. And if you’re greedy, you might be so tempted by potential rewards, that you overlook risk altogether.

Probe the basis of your belief. We often make decisions based upon our assumptions, be prepared to test those assumptions against the reality of the situation. Test your opinions by looking for information that challenges your beliefs, rather than looking for information that supports your opinions.

Be prepared to look at your areas of expertise, your beliefs and your philosophies, and honestly assess the restrictions. Search for examples. Identify situations or individuals that have faced a similar decision. Evaluate their experiences to better prepare for your own decision. Watch for over confidence in yourself and others when you venture outside your individual perspective.

If at all possible, do a partial test-run. By this I mean, create a scenario in line with your overall objective, but only do part of the overall decision just to see how it might unfold.

Within the process of making decisions, it is vitally important to look further than one step ahead and to also take into consideration all future options.

Continually and consistently search for new information or insight which may help you in the decision making process. As long as you know where to search for the relevant information - and can verify the accuracy of what you learn - you will be well positioned to see all sides of an issue and make a sensible judgment.

The most effective decisions flow from your ability to surmise the right information, to read the situation correctly and to ask the right person the right question at the right time.

You should also consider: What are the costs associated with this decision and are the benefits worth the cost?

We’ve all heard stories of leaders or we know someone that has for whatever reason, decided to take a rather large risk and from that action, have been able to deliver some outstanding results. Basically, they were willing to make bold decisions with no real understanding, if the outcome they were pursuing would ever be attained.

However, the reality is that most successful leaders take a balanced approach to risk. That is; they accept that risk is inherent, but they make a sharp distinction between calculated risk and careless risk.

They look at a couple of key areas to help them make the distinction, areas such as:

1. Identify the cost
You have to be clear about your viewpoint, theories and assumptions and think through the potential consequences of any decision you make. Ask yourself what could go wrong under any and all circumstances, both internally and externally, and then evaluate the potential effect and magnitude.

Before deciding, picture the expected outcomes of your decision and mentally forecast the ramifications of your chosen course of action.

2. Diversify your approach to reduce the risk
Without turning your back on any element of risk, make sure that you put the context of risk into the bigger picture. That way you can offset risky decisions, ventures, or initiatives with more predictable outcomes.

3. Know when, how and where to read the warning signs
Make a point of understanding, monitoring and analysing the aspects that a favourable outcome of your decision depends upon. Work hard to detect if things aren’t working, as you believe they should be.

Makes sure you have created a network of people that can help you monitor the situation or hold you accountable to the things you should be monitoring.

So hopefully from what we have outlined, you can see that there is a role for Head, Heart and Guts both individually and collectively in your decision making process. To what degree you use any or all of them, is a decision best left to you once you have considered they types of things we have just worked through.

The Journey Continues!