So who's in charge?

I don’t like indecision-by-consensus, and I've seen it too often. I am a huge believer in having someone in charge.

Much business success comes from the ability for leadership to make a decision and act on it. Yes of course you may need to socialize the decision in your organization and have a strategy for getting it implemented. But that is different from not being able to make the decision stick in the first place.

Having said that – if you have partners, by all means consult with them and show them due respect. One of the strategies I recommend is to have each partner responsible for making the decisions in their own specialty area. But there still needs to be someone who will have the final word, someone who is managing the budget or whatever is the constraint. One person: the GM, the President, whoever – but someONE.

And for that one person here is some valuable advice: make the decision and move on. If you are at all smart, most of your decisions will be right. Yes, some of them may be wrong, but most of them will be right. And if you put off your decision, the percentage of right to wrong will probably be no different. And you will have lost all that time when it hadn’t been made and all that time when you were sweating it.

So:

Have someone in charge.
Make the decision and move on.

Try it – you might like it.