Don’t decide day

Leaders and managers of the world, unite with me in celebrating Don’t Decide Day!

It must have been about twenty five years ago when I was sitting in my office doing – well I forget what I was doing.  It was a nice office though, a sort of S shape with my desk in one part and some sofas in the other.  I was working in office products at the time and so the furniture was always going to be good.  From my desk I could see through the windows ahead and to the side of me and got a good view up the road.  If you know the area it is now a tile warehouse at the top of Chillingham Road in Newcastle.

Anyway, I was at my desk when Kath popped her head around the door and said ‘We have a problem.’  Now Kath’s conversations always started with having a problem and would be followed by an explanation of the latest issue, in great detail.  Once she had finished I would usually let her know what to do and she would go away content.  But this day was different.  I put down my pen (I must have been writing something then?) and turned to her.  I waited until she had given me her story and asked ‘So what would you do?’  She stopped, had a think about it and then gave me a perfectly reasonable response.  She had clearly thought about it and so I said ‘Then that’s what I would do.’  So she did.

I learnt two things that day:

1. Kath was clearly capable of solving most of the things she considered as a problem.  She just needed some encouragement.
2. I don’t need to make all the decisions.

She came back to me several times over the coming weeks always with a problem and always going away having worked out what she needed to do until one day she stopped coming.  When we met up in her own workspace she would tell me what she had done to solve the problems that still kept coming.

Here I am twenty five years later and I’m still being asked to decide what to do.  Some of the decisions I make and some of them I refer back using the ‘So what would you do?’ technique.  Some people are easier to encourage and others take a bit of work.

With the particularly intractable ones I ask ‘Do you want me to make the decisions?  If so then why do I need you?’ and that usually does the trick.  I’m happy to talk through their thoughts and suggestions and help them to get where they want to be but not take the final decision unless I have to.

My job is not to make decisions per se but to create the environment in which successful decisions can be made and so I ‘m going to try and take things a step further and launch an international Don’t Decide Day.

For that day I’ll ask questions such as ‘What kind of outcome would you like to see?’ or ‘If this was your business what would you choose’ and ‘Is there anybody you know who could help you out with this?’ and let’s see where we get to.

By the way I haven’t quite decided which day it will be on.