The Right Answer

The right answer to a situation often is related to perspective.  The criteria that makes it right can be different for various people.  Of course, there is the fact based information but when it comes to outcome the decision making process can diverge dramatically.


I see two potential overarching guiding factors. you can make a decision that will give you the biggest potential upside or you can make a decision that will give you the least potential downside. I suppose the skilled decision maker would know when to use each perspective but lets be honest, I'm not always the best at making decisions and neither are most people.


I seem to be noticing that I am migrating from looking for the biggest upside to the least downside. I see a couple of potential reasons for this. One is I'm getting older and the other is I changed jobs about a year ago and the job change came with a perspective change on the same subject material.


If you are making decision that have the highest potential for good results you are looking for the biggest impact. You are trying to have the biggest outcome. The drawback is if you have made a bad decision you will often have more the clean up. When you are young, I think it would be easier to make a decision that has a big impact. There is a pretty good chance you haven't had to clean up too many messes, yet. They will come and you will learn. Hope fully you will make better decisions that require less clean up. There in lies the change. Now you are looking to make decisions that have the least potential for a downside.


If a decision has a limited downside, it is probably safer but also has less probability to have a significant impact. Sometimes this is the best type of decision to make but it shouldn't be the default decision.


In m employment I find that I have less control with the input of decisions I make. It is a sign of moving forward in an organization. However, it seems to make it easier to make safe decisions. Not having the control to make small corrections as things move forward, makes it difficult to take chances with decision making. That being said, it doesn't mean you should always be taking the safe way out.


All this explains a lot of why people seem to take the safe way out as they move up in an organization. Everyone says that they would do it differently of they were in charge but it rarely seems to change. It seems like you can change the people but the results remain eerily similar.


Maybe a sign of great courage is to take fearless decision making from a place where you have a lot of control to a place where you have less control. Even if you trust the people around you it is human nature to make it easier for them and ultimately you. So you opt for the safe way. Once in a while I think going with a bit of calculated risk is a good plan. It will keep you sharp and maybe make everything better, in the long run.


I'm in the middle of learning this life lesson, I have not figured it all out but acknowledging I am faced with this dilemma is the first step to learning how to step forward and find some of that creative courage I have deep down inside.