A Three Step System For Making The Right Decisions

What if you had a sure fire system for making really good decisions – how much more successful would you be?

Some of the decisions I see entrepreneurs repeatedly make poor decisions around are:

- Where they spend their time
- What opportunities to say yes to
- What clients they should work with
- What team members best align with the role
- What ideas should they take action on

Back when I worked for Motorola there was a very specific process we used to decide what client projects we would engage our precious resources on. The process included a series of questions and filters that we had to assessed the project against such as how long it would take, how certain the sales person was that the client would buy, as well as if they , even had the budget for the project. But the most important criteria was always what other projects we should have to not work on to move this opportunity forward.

This is a mantra I came up with years ago that you will want to write down:

Everything you say yes to means you have to say no to
something else. Are you saying yes to the right things?

In order to best use your own precious resources your job is to excel at making good decisions. As a coach to so many entrepreneurs who are chasing their “Big Idea” the first place we always start is developing a formula to make profitable decisions quickly.

Here is a quick and easy version of this formula for excelling in your decision making:

1. Is it Aligned?
Saying yes to an opportunity for your time or money only makes sense if it will move you closer to your goals. However, the opportunity has to align with your values and priorities. Alignment means that you are saying yes to things that feel congruent at the core of your being AND move you closer to your ultimate vision of success.

2. How will it make me money?
If an opportunity is aligned, then we have to explore where the money is, especially if cash flow is a priority. Saying yes to something because its fun, exciting or an ego-boost can be a distraction without knowing how and when it makes money (or leads to making money.)

To be clear, I’m not suggesting you take on an opportunity ONLY for the money. Typically that’s a bad idea that derails you from your bigger goals because your time gets sucked into unaligned projects.

3. Do I have the right resources?
Being able to move an idea into results requires having the right resources: money, time and people. Without them, you’ll end up being frustrated and overwhelmed. Before saying yes, be sure to “reverse engineer” your outcome and look at each milestone or task and ask yourself “how will this task get done?” It will help you get clear where on the calendar it fits and who has time to do it.

Remember, just because it’s a good idea doesn’t mean it has to be YOUR good idea. Developing the discipline to say no is the fastest way to escalate into profitable excellence – building a business around the highest payoff opportunities you love the most!

——————————————————————————————-

If you need more help with this check out the ULTIMATE Success Generator tool as a step by step process to design your decision making formula.