Want to take on an intriguing personal challenge for the week?
Not only make fewer decisions, but also INFLUENCE fewer decisions.
What I am talking about is trying to embrace more Level 5 decisions this week.
Level 5 Decisions
In his book, “The End of Marketing as We Know It,” (affiliate link) Sergio Zyman, former Chief Marketing Officer at Coca-Cola, discussed the five levels of the decision making process he used relative to his team.
My boss, Greg Reid, read the book by Sergio Zyman and employed four of the five levels of decision making with our team:
- Level 1 – His decision with no input from the team
- Level 2 – His decision with input from the team
- Level 3 – Consensus decision (This is the one Greg ruled out; we did not have consensus decisions.)
- Level 4 – A team member’s decision with his input
- Level 5 – A team member’s decision with no input or influence from him
Some co-workers found the five level decision making process difficult, but it proved very freeing since you knew ahead of time what type of input or approval you needed to keep an initiative going.
While there were very few Level 1 or Level 5 situations with Greg, I have tried over time to embrace more Level 5 decisions. The key has been not necessarily caring about things less, but caring intensely about fewer things. Now I try to focus on only being an influence on decisions involving what matters strategically.
If nothing else, experience has demonstrated on many occasions that even when a small thing does not go as I wanted, everything still works out and frequently works out in some other unexpected positive way.
Ready to Allow More Decision Making without Your Influence this Week!
I invite you to join me this week to see if there are decisions you used to make or try to shape that can be left to other people. Rather than being nerve racking, as I’d expected, embracing more Level 5 decisions has mainly provided a lot of peace, relief, and importantly, growth for those I work with as they get to exercise their own strategic decision making skills.
So, what do you think about this decision making process? Are you ready for more Level 5 decision making without your influence this week? – Mike Brown
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