by Tim  Moore

 

No organization has ever done anything with 100 percent efficiency. In fact across global business as a broad category, much action is relatively inefficient. Within the ranks of media, efficiency is on the ropes, withering under the press of cost-cutting, predictably resulting in growing dysfunction.
 
How many times have you heard the maxim, a real leader must be decisive. The truth is, any leader must be decisive or in fact he or she cannot lead. After a speech I delivered recently, a newly crowned program director rushed up and asked, "With the conditions in our company, you know...no research or anything, what am I supposed to do?" I had just covered a list of ten things to improve his cluster, and I replied, "Start with those ten things." "No," he persisted, "what am I supposed to DO?" Out of frustration I regrouped my thoughts, then redirected: "Hey, why not grab 15-20 listeners in your P-1 database and drag them somewhere, buy them lunch, and ask them what the hell is on their minds." "Thanks, that's great," he said as he pivoted and headed out of the room satisfied.  Sometimes we get caught tripping over words. Decisiveness may simply be a confidence-building rapid response, just in time to make a difference in the way someone plans or executes.
 
If you allow the barometric pressure of accountability and fear for your position to override your thinking, you'll find it ever more difficult to be decisive. By definition, the term does not mean stubbornness, and it's not a posture. Decisiveness is rather a willingness, once you've weighed a situation, to act...to move forward.  It is, in purest application in today's climate, not a strategic advantage but the very price of admission. The actions you take, the things you accomplish, and the distribution of that behavior within your staff, are what make decisiveness a core temperament trait.
 
The recent decision by naval command-and-control to aggressively parry the piracy of an American ship and crew was decisive. Lives depended on it; time was evaporating. That in the hours and days following that sudden and aggressive action, countless people with no contingent liability or skin in the game, could critique, embellish and play the game of what-if, was not decisive but instead, merely activity.
 
Being decisive means thin-slicing, assessing whatever solid criteria exists, integrity, and a willingness to endure the fire of arm-chair quarterbacks from high in the bleachers of hindsight. Post action, decisive people must also be willing to "push & shove" when push comes to shove. With the passage of time, fewer people in politics or business possess this self-confidence or the assertiveness to operate under the Just-In-Time offensive strategy to act on their convictions for what's best for the company or the constituents. 
 
Though they seldom articulate it, your staff needs decisiveness; trying to lead without it is like pushing on a rope... activity mistaken for outcome.