How I Approach the Toughest Decisions

where one of the candidates or executives is asked how he or she goes about making a decision, but in the end, there may be no more valuable skill for someone in any kind of leadership position.

This is, in fact, the first obligation of a leader and a decision maker. Our job is not to “go with our gut” or fixate on the first impression we form about an issue. No, we need to be strong enough to resist thinking that is too neat, too plausible, and therefore almost always wrong. Because if the leader can’t take the time to develop a clear sen

Our goal in decision-making is not just to gather information, but to gather information relevant to our decision. That requires more than building an inventory of data points; it requires understanding the why and how behind those data points—the principles that good decision-makers use in this area. Getting at those principles requires asking the

These are important questions but impossible to answer in one’s head. Better to take a risk, try something, and distill the answer from experience rather than from navel-gazing. Action leads to insight more often than insight leads to action.5