How To Make Faster Decisions Without Sacrificing Quality

When you are trying to make progress in your business without a clear direction, you will end up having to correct your mistakes. But if you wait too long to make a decision, you keep your business stuck. Decisions must be made quickly in order to maintain your progress but you also need be careful to protect the quality of your brand. It's important to be mindful because decision-making is the engine of every business. Every delay can result in lost opportunities or making your team frustrated. But making decisions too quickly can also lead to reworking on something you thought you finished, or potentially damaging trust with your audience. When you look at some of the best leaders in the world, you will notice that they create systems that allow them to make decisions with confidence, even if they don't have all the answers yet. There are many examples we can learn from. When you make good decisions in a reasonable timeframe, you move your business forward.

You must learn to set decision-making routines in advance. What you can do is to define your non-negotiables such as quality standards or budget thresholds. Then you can ask questions like "Does it align with our brand?". "Does it serve our audience?". "Does it move us closer to our goals?". When your criteria's are clear, decision-making is easier to do because you are no longer re-examining your priorities with every choice you make. 

One of the most effective things you can do is to rank your decisions by their level of consequences. What this means is that you create rules around your decision-making. For example, any small, reversible decisions can be made quickly by the person closest to the task at hand. Larger, irreversible decisions deserve more time and attention from the people who are making that particular decision. This keeps your team from getting held-up on trivial approvals. The outcomes in your business get better and your brand is more decisive when it comes down to decision-making. 

Without a clear approach, your decisions are made recklessly. When you make wrong decisions, your projects take more time than necessary to finish. When this happens your brand loses its quality and you become burnt out. These various outcomes are expensive to your business and can show to others that you are either disorganized or careless.

If you want to uphold this standard in your business, you need to commit to building intentionally. What that means is that you need to avoid making careless decisions. When you look at brands that have lasted for decades, they don't always get decisions right on the first try. But they do develop their understanding in order to decide and adapt quickly when needed.

A decision made well and made fast moves your business in the right direction. We encourage you to move at the right pace but at the same time do not wait for the perfect moment.