Lissa Kowalski
Peter Drucker said, “Whenever you see a successful business, someone once made a courageous decision”. I’m more inclined to think there were many, regularly occurring decisions, courageous and not. So often, leaders are unwilling or unable to make not just courageous decisions, but any decisions. This deficit results in disengaged employees, decreased productivity, creativity and profits. There’s always a rationale for not making a decision—not enough information, poor decision making processes, unclear accountability, desire for consensus and so on. Recently, ABC news reported that Americans work more than anyone in the industrialized world--I wonder how many of those hours are wasted due to re-work and work-arounds directly related to “decision avoidance”. I think Harvey Cox, captured it best, “Not to decide, is to decide” but at what cost?