by Sanda Berar

Created on: November 01, 2009   Last Updated: November 02, 2009

As a manager, you're in charge and you must be capable of taking decisions. If you are not ready to take them and accordingly accept the responsibility and the consequences, than someone else should be in charge. Someone has to make the difficult decisions, someone has to take the blame if things go wrong, and someone has to be able to redirect resources and effort to make them right.

1. DO own your decisions.

You might not have had all the right facts in place when you took the decision. You might have got fuzzy information. You might have allowed yourself to be wrongly influenced by others. You might have had to take the decision under pressure. But as soon as you took the decision, all this does not matter anymore. As a manager, you have to own it. "You can delegate authority, but you cannot delegate responsibility". Byron Dorgan.

2. DO seek out and listen to your people and their opinion.

You need all the information you can get to help you take the best decision. This information is not always available on paper, you need to go and get it, and you need to talk with your people. It is as well essential that your employees know that you're interested in what they have to say. That whatever decision you choose to take in the end, you've done this after listening to them and acknowledging their perspective. Furthermore, the majority of good ideas and solutions will come from your people, not you.

3. DO scream if you need to, but do it privately. Than take the decision you ought to be taking.

Times are tough. You know projects need to be closed, people must be fired. You've managed to get yourself to accept it. Than you analyze the data and the situation is even worse. On paper is easy, in reality it's far tougher. You're going to have to cut down a whole team. Or you'll need someday to fire you're friend. Still, you know what you have to do. So go, lock yourself in a safe place, and scream. Than come out, and take the decision you know you ought to be taking.

4. DO admit when you took a wrong decision, than back up and correct it.

There are times when decisions must be taken under conditions of uncertainty, when we don't and can't know all the facts, when the decision is, more than anything else, a stab in the dark. Chances are high in these circumstances, that you get it wrong. But as soon as it becomes clear that the chosen road is getting stuck, back-up. Admit you've done a mistake. Admit the decision was wrong, and find ways to correct it. Re-direct the effort and resources in implementing the best alternative, in getting the things right.

5. DON'T procrastinate. Don't wait for the no-risk solution.

"If you think too long, you think wrong". Jim Kat. If you're waiting for the perfect solution, you're going to wait too long. If you're waiting for the right time, it will never come. There is a lot of pressure to come up with the risk-free and best possible decision and there are never enough guarantees. But one of the most common errors is over analyzes of the information when time does not permit it. By hesitating, you're making a choice already. You're choosing to let somebody else, or fate, or time to decide in your place. More often than not, not taking a decision has worse implications than taking the wrong decision.

6. DON'T be a bottleneck

Do not try to control every detail, to take all the decisions yourself. Force authority down and out whenever this is reasonable. Find where the problems are, add structure and delegate. The tendency is toward wrongly-understood power and control. Resist it.

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