Decision-making is a leader’s superpower – or their kryptonite.

Decisions are so central to your role as a leader, you’d better be masterful at them. Because if not: it’ll not just be an opportunity missed. It could spell disaster.

That’s an especially apposite thought in the current climate: the meeting-point of complexity, ambiguity and uncertainty with an extended period of pivotal transition. A cauldron guaranteed to exacerbate the challenges of high-quality decision-making in suboptimal circumstances.

What the research suggests

A recent (2020) study looking into the effectiveness of leadership decision-making in high-complexity systems and situations reminds us that stress and fatigue are the major factors negatively impacting leaders’ decision-making abilities.

Emotions, although a necessary ingredient to any decision-making framework (that emotional piece is what ultimately has us opt for one option over another), are also cited as the single biggest factor in decision error, especially.

Decisions concerning people are the hardest to make.

And these internal challenges are all exacerbated because today’s decision-makers are overloaded with information, but without adequate heuristics for understanding the data.

So … Stress. Fatigue. Emotions. People. Information overload. That sounds like the current climate.

Add to that all the studies that already tell us trying to achieve too many things at once leads to decision-fatigue – which, in turn, depletes willpower, postpones otherwise-urgent decisions and generally leads to overall poorer decision quality.

Today’s decision-maker faces a tough task.

The benefits of peak state experience to decision-makers

So, what are the options for today’s leader?

Well, I invite you to think of the last time you made a great decision. Or better yet, a series of great decisions. My guess is that, unless down to luck and/or significant outside support, you were already feeling pretty good that day. Energised. Vital. Internally calm. Singularly focused.

Some might say: in a Peak State.

Let’s reverse the thought. Think of any time when you are in a peak state. Are decisions ever a problem for you, at those moments? I should think rarely, if ever.

What is it about being in a peak state that makes such a step change in our decision-making ability?

• High energy and low stress.
• Emotional regulation.
• Felt connection.
• Singular focus.
• High goal clarity.

A playbook for maximising decision-making quality in high pressure situations. So, here’s the learning …

If you want to be a better decision-maker for the current climate, engineer more peak states and be in flow more of the time! ✅

3 strategies for engineering your peak state

#1 Powerful Morning Routine

As Sun Tzu said: “Every battle is won or lost before it is ever fought”.

Perhaps even more on the nose are the words of Richard Whatley: “Lose an hour in the morning, and you’ll spend all day looking for it.”

How you start your day is critical to how you’ll operate throughout your day. It is also the perfect high-energy time to achieve a peak state.

You know how to run your morning. But if you need a quick reminder, make sure these 3 ingredients are the pillars to your peak-state focused start-of-day:

1. FUEL. Feed your system. Quality nutrition and plenty of hydration.
2. MOVEMENT. Get moving! Yoga. Stretching. Weights. Cardio.
3. REFLECTION. Grab your journal. Connect with the bigger picture.

Which sets us up nicely for strategy #2 …

#2 High Goal Clarity

Notice that any peak state experience is accompanied by razor-sharp focus on the big picture and the next progress-making key moves.

I believe our decision-making impairment of “too much data” is less about that and more about “not enough goal clarity”. Make connecting with the bigger picture part of your regular ritual.

Every single week: Take time to review progress last week and set priorities for the coming week.

Every single day: Revisit your weekly priorities and set the day’s path based on those mid-level priorities – not just the urgent reactions of today.

#3 Narrow Focus

One of the significant benefits of having high goal clarity is that everything else falls away. It also becomes far easier to say “no” to distractions (external and internal), as well as anything else that would pull us from our path.

But we can go further. Because again, notice that in any peak state experience, not only are you crystal clear on your primary goal, you’ll also NOT concerning yourself with much else. You’re not holding on to your major objective AND a lot of other noise. You’ve shed that. Your field of focus is narrow.

Build the habit of narrowing your focus by installing an End Of Day Routine that sets the priorities for tomorrow – so removing a major source of tomorrow’s decision-fatigue and start-up inertia.

Also spend this EOD review time delegating any open decisions to others in your team – and thinking ahead to tomorrow’s potential decision points and giving them away, too. In short: use your team strategically to keep the more minor decisions off your plate. (And offer a learning opportunity for them, in the process.)

A final thought

One more share from that recent study: risk appreciation increases as decision-making confidence increases … but only to a point.

To put it another way: when we’re super-confident in our decision-making ability, our appreciation of the risks can deteriorate. Essentially, we become over-confident.

So, having given us all a set of peak state decision-making practices that will contribute to our decision-making skill, quality and confidence … let’s also incorporate a final suggestion to get someone else involved in your decision conversation.

Trusted outside perspective can offset that potential blind spot.

…

Reference:
Hallo, L., Nguyen, T., Gorod, A., & Tran, P. (2020). “Effectiveness of Leadership Decision-Making in Complex Systems.” Systems, 8(1), 5.

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