Drain the swamp

People are really, really busy these days.  The best and brightest workers are the busiest; the reward for great work is more work.  Everyone seems so busy fighting operational fires that they have almost no time to invest in strategic decisions that will create a better future.  Yet they must …

To mix in a few more metaphors, here’s a few ideas (an ounce of prevention) that could help you rid your backside of alligators by draining the swamp:

• Get help to capture a strategic decision baseline against a proven decision pattern.  Use this to identify your top 10 open decisions. 
• Figure out ways to get help to attack these decisions in parallel.  Distribute these well-framed decisions to the lesser mortals on your team.  Use proven criteria patterns to make sure they ask the right questions, but don’t nit-pick the analysis details.  Become a decision manager more than a decision-maker.
• Stop writing documents.  Capture the essence of your thinking in an appropriate Decision Management tool (e.g. my Decision Driven® Strategy web service).  Think and capture your thinking electronically in one step.  Think well, write little.
• Grow the strategic decision management capabilities of your team.  There’s no other way to make a collective leap ahead without a 2, 3 or 5X improvement in these thinking skills.   Don’t let your legacy be that “He/she could do it all”, but rather “He/she showed me a better way and gave me a chance to grow”.

Decision patterns are available.  Easy-to-use web-based tools are available.  Training is available.  Consulting jump-start service packages are proven, primed and ready.  So put down the hose, forget the alligators for 10 seconds and make the call!

John Fitch

Please sign up for our next Using Decision Patterns webinar.  It’s free!  See the What’s Happening panel on the left for details.