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High Stress Decision Making

High Stress Decision Making

By: Ross Paterson

Last week we discussed the importance of making educated assessments of the immediate IMPACT and future IMPLICATIONS of crises as a business owner. Today I want to share a few tools and a process to help guide some of the critical decisions leaders have to make as they manage through tough times.

Two areas must be evaluated separately and then together: People and Strategic Priorities.

First, force rank the members of your team. This seems a little harsh but decisions must be made. Here is the question, If I could only keep one person on my team, who would it be? How about 2, 3,…10? Once you put this in writing it is a very sensitive, highly confidential document, keep it locked up.

Second, based on your IMPACT and IMPLICATIONS work reset your strategic priorities.

C Priorities: If your profit was cut by 25%, what initiatives could you put on hold for 3-12 months to save cash and resources.

B Priorities: If your profit was cut by 75% what are the critical initiatives that we need to maintain, or create in light of the crisis situation.

A Priorities: If we can’t do these core business operations anymore, we might as well close the doors and go back to the drawing board.

Click through to our blog for some details on how these work together.

How do we leverage the evaluation outputs together. Imagine the work of a ‘C Priority’ corresponds with one of your lower ranking employees. A simple decision would be to temporarily or permanently lay off that employee, while you put that initiative on the shelf. Of course, it is almost never that simple. But you can see how the outputs need to be determined separately and then together.

XM Truth: Not making decisions equals not leading.

The longer you own and lead in business the more experience you will gain with crisis management. Don’t let fear paralyze you. Organizations need #XtraMile leaders the most in the midst of the storm. It can be done, it should be done, it must be done.