Nine Decision Techniques to Get You There Faster
After 37 years of dealing with contractors and construction companies, one of the things we have observed is that when it comes to sweeping, high impact, strategic decisions, it helps to prepare by DECIDING HOW YOU WILL DECIDE. Making this call before you embark on what might be scary, emotional, risky or once-in-a-generation decisions frees the group to focus on the choices to be made rather than haggling over how the final call gets made. Sounds eminently reasonable, doesn’t it?
Please tune in this week as Wayne reviews nine different decision techniques, opines on the three that won’t likely be of much help to you and encourages you to make decisions swiftly and surely. Wayne’s theory is that big picture decisions delayed or avoided are almost ALWAYS suboptimal. Does that sound reasonable to you? Please share your thoughts with us at wrivers@performanceconstruction.com.
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WAYNE RIVERS: Hi, everyone. This is Wayne Rivers at Performance Construction Advisors where We Build Better Contractors.
This week I want to talk about nine decision techniques to get you there faster. Okay? First, I want to read something from James Clear. I don't know if you take James Clear's weekly newsletter or not. It's worth it. It's really abbreviated, but it's got some powerful ideas. One of the things that he wrote about just a few months ago here, "Trades are always happening whether you see them or not. Yes to the early meeting equals no to the quiet morning. Yes to the extra project equals no to the free weekend. Yes to something that drains you equals no to time that fulfills you. Saying yes to one thing is always saying no to something else. The point isn't to say no to everything, but simply to recognize the difference between a good and a bad yes. Try to improve the ratio in your life."
So our consultant, Doug McCright, brilliant, he says life is all about trade-offs. And that's what James Clear is talking about here. When you agree to work harder, you agree to be on another committee, you agree to volunteer to something in your community, you agree to this, that and the other, you're closing the door on some other opportunities. And not saying you shouldn't do all those things. Maybe you should, but you've got to understand that there's always, always, always trade-offs. So thanks to James Clear and thanks to Doug McCright.
Okay, nine decision making techniques. This came from Arlin from a blog that he takes from called eckfeldt.com in May of '26. And what about this is important to you? Why are we talking about deciding? Contractors have to decide things on the fly every day. But I guess the point of this is one of the things I sense, I observe, that people have struggled with over time is deciding how they're going to decide, especially when they've got big things.
If it's, "Okay, we can't pour the concrete because it's raining," it's an easy decision, okay? But when you're thinking about strategy, do we open a new office? Do we hire this high-powered, high-cost individual that maybe can take us to a different level, but maybe not? When you're making big strategic decisions, people should decide how they're going to decide first, especially when you've got groups, three, four, five, 10 decision makers, especially in family businesses where you've got stakeholders who may not be involved in the day-to-day operation of the business but may have a stake in the ownership or other outcomes.
So decide how you're going to decide first. Are we going to vote? Is this going to be informal? How are we going to do it? And that will help you get through the decisions faster. So nine ways Eckfeldt describes to make decisions. Number one, he says consensus. Margaret Thatcher said, "Consensus is the absence of leadership." And I know we want to make consensus decisions. We want everybody on the team to come along and one big happy family and all that. Consensus is probably the worst way to make decisions because it's too informal.
I mean, what does it mean if we have a 10-person group and six say, "We probably should consider that." And three say, "Ah," and one says, "Heck no, absolutely not. We cannot possibly do that." Is that consensus? I don't even know. How do you even define consensus? So I think that's probably the worst method, if you will, of making decisions. So let's move on. Let's come up with something better. Unanimous. You almost never need a unanimous decision. Unanimity is a barrier to making decisions. I remember a buy-sell agreement that we reviewed, gosh, 15 years ago. And for certain decisions in the company, they required unanimous agreement among the shareholders.
And I think they had... Oh golly, they had man, a couple dozen shareholders by that time. I mean, it was written in the black and white in their shareholders' agreement. They never used it. They never made decisions that way. They had a couple of really strong leaders that made great decisions. But unanimity was written into their corporate documents. Had they applied the corporate documents scrupulously, they never would have made any decisions. You almost never need unanimous decisions. Okay? Objectionless. So I say, "Hey, we can do X, Y, and Z. Are there any objections?" Nobody says no. Okay. Maybe that's consensus. If there's no objections, maybe that's consensus.
The fourth one, super majority. This is really handy, especially for big decisions. Do we close the company? Do we open a new office? Do we buy a million dollar piece of equipment we've never used before that's going to transform the way we do something in our organization? Super majority is a good way to do that. So you define... again, decide how you're going to decide. What is super majority? Is it 75% of the vote? Is it 60% of the vote? What defines super majority? I think most people go with 75, but that may or may not work for you.
Simple majority. Okay, we've got 10 people. Six people say yes. Four people say no. It is passed. There's nothing wrong with voting. We vote every four years or every two years. We vote for all kinds of things. We vote those TV shows that have singers and people vote for the more popular singer. I mean, we vote about things all the time. Why wouldn't you vote in your meetings? Why not? If that will help you get to decisions faster. The speed of business today is faster than it's ever been. If you can make solid business decisions and you can make them faster by implementing vote supermajority, simple majority, whatever it is, do it. It will help you get where you're going faster.
Guess what? You're not always going to make the right decision. No matter which methodology you use, that's okay. We learn from our mistakes and we move on, right? As long as it's not... As Getty said, J. Paul Getty, who was once the richest man in the world, "If this isn't going to kill my business, then I know it's a decision I can make." The scary decisions for him were ones that were so big that they could take down his entire empire. If a decision isn't going to cripple your business and it's the wrong decision, it's not going to kill you. Okay?
The seventh methodology is input with authority. So you've got, "Okay, I'm going to have Neha and Karen and several other people do a little research and they're going to give me their input and then I'm going to use my authority as the senior person, almost the senior person to implement the decision." That works pretty well. I like ideas that come up from the... I like ideas that bubble up from the bottom. And if you can get your people involved, instead of just saying, "Ah, decisions made from on high, that's how we're going to do it." If you can get your people involved and have those decisions, as ideas, that research bubble up, I just think that works so well and it builds, guess what? Consensus.
All right. Eight, delegate. Hey, maybe you don't need to be involved with the decision at all. "Neha, you make decision. Karen, it's your call, whatever you want to do. I trust you." Man, when you delegate decisions to others, that absolutely says, "I trust you. " And trust is a key value here. I hope it's a key value in your organization, but how better to show people that you trust them to say, "Ah, I know you're going to make the right decision. Just do it." And then finally, again, we're going back to the negative side, avoiding decisions.
37 years I've been working with family businesses and contractors and over the years, everything in between. And I bet I can count on one hand deferred avoided decisions that made sense and panned out intelligently in the long run. Deciding to decide is so important to keep your organization advancing. Avoiding decisions, delaying decisions unnecessarily, worrying about the lack of consensus, worrying about the loud dissenter, those things keep organizations from moving forward and making business decisions in a business-like way.
Let me know what you think. wrivers@performanceconstruction.com. This is Wayne Rivers at PCA, where We Build Better Contractors.
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