One question to make your team better decision makers

I had just wrapped up our annual planning meeting at QALO. We’d made our strategic how-to-win decisions, set our goals for the year, and I was sitting back in my chair, admiring the whiteboard and feeling proud of the alignment we'd created in just a day together.

Hard decisions had been made.

We’d said no more than we said yes.

It was just about execution now.

Or so I thought…

The next day I found myself in the trenches catching opportunity grenades from my leaders.

My VP of Sales walked in asking about an opportunity for a new retail partnership.

My VP of Marketing was contacted by our PR team to collaborate on an upcoming issue of Outdoor Magazine.

My VP of Ops wanted to review the potential of moving our shipping in-house from our 3PL.

After hours of working through the opportunity grenades, I slouched in my chair, exhausted. It is estimated that an adult makes 35,000 decisions in a day.

As an entrepreneur, that number feels low. When you’re leading a team, you’re not only making decisions for yourself but helping the leaders on your team make theirs as well.

Shifting my thinking from a victim of indecisive VPs, to a responsible CEO, I opened up my photos app and perused the screenshot of the whiteboard for some form of inspiration.

Something clicked.

On the whiteboard, I had written, "This is Day 1 of a new year."

I had only created alignment for 1 day. Leadership is the glue holding the alignment together for the remaining 364 days.

I wasn't giving my leaders a tool for filtering opportunities. I am a ruthless planner for business but not a rigid one. A plan with defined goals is a structure we have to measure opportunity against, what could I do to maintain the alignment and provide my leaders with a filter for vetting opportunities?

This led me to one question.

How will pursuing this opportunity help us achieve our goals faster?

When they came to me, I would ask them this question. Eventually, my leaders learned to ask themselves this question without needing to talk to me.

Do the same with your business and watch the method work.