Let me run something by you I’ve noticed time and time again.

It has to do with staff, decision making and what happens after we make a decision.

To me, there’s two parts to decision making – 1. The decision itself and 2. How we go about carrying out that decision.

Now then, in broad strokes, basically three things can happen after a decision is made and carried out.

1. If staff like the decision and the execution is done really well, everyone (well, most everyone) moves forward productively.  

2. If staff do not like the decision yet the execution is done really well, staff may have some begrudging upsets yet they tend to adapt and move forward productively.

3. If staff do not like the decision (or sometimes even like the decision) and the execution is poor, staff stays wedded to their upset for a long-long time.

OK, now here’s the moral of this story.

Often when staff is upset, we interpret their upset as “not liking” the decision. And them not liking the decision is why everything is so difficult with lack of buy in and push back.

When a great majority of the time we create this challenge ourselves, not by what we decided but by how we went about executing it.

This is the place I often see a real blind spot.  

We grump and grumble about staff not dealing with the changes when what we should be doing, many times, is examining our part in creating discord with our method of execution. 

That’s a humbling, tough thing to do.  It takes slowing down. Being willing to see something in ourselves that we might not like and be willing to let the learning sink in.

Sure not everyone is going to be happy with every decision, change, or direction we take. 

But as I said, if the execution is done really well, things will grind gears a bit but things will move forward eventually.

I feel it would be most beneficial if we can be aware of a possible blind spot here. 

Thanks for listening.