How decisive are the leaders in your organization?

Our reader poll today asks: How decisive are the leaders in your organization?

• Extremely: They make decisions quickly as soon as they have enough information 11.90%
• Very: They make rapid decisions but can occasionally get bogged down 37.30%
• Somewhat: It takes a lot of effort to move them to make a decision 30.27%
• Not very: They’re hesitant to make decisions and only do so when forced 13.51%
• Not at all: They’re paralyzed by the notion of making a decision 7.02%

A 50/50 toss-up. It’s interesting that 50% of you report your organizations are decisive and the other 50% are indecisive. So what’s the difference? Risk tolerance? A need for information? A desire for consensus? When making decisions, weigh both decision risk and execution risk. Decision risk is whether or not you’re making the right choice. That’s driven by how much information you have and how much ambiguity you face. While it’s tempting to continue gathering more and more information to reduce decision risk, remember it takes time to do that which introduces new sources of risk. Execution risk is once you’ve made a hopefully good decision, does it get implemented or not. If you haven’t built the proper support in the organization for the choice you’re making, you might run into resistance which can prevent decision execution. And in those cases, you may as well have not made a decision at all. Balance time, information, decision risk, and execution risk. Know when you have enough information and support to move forward and make the call.

– Mike Figliuolo at thoughtLEADERS, LLC

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These results were originally a SmartPulse poll in SmartBrief on Leadership which tracks feedback from more than 240,000 business leaders. Get smarter on leadership and sign up for the SmartBrief on Leadership e-newsletter.