How to Get Others to Adopt Your Recommendation

Nancy Duarte

December 12, 2018

As my company grew, I’d periodically be accused of making decisions slowly. I couldn’t figure out why, until one day it dawned on me: While employees thought they were asking me to weigh in on a choice that had to be made, I thought they were making small talk at the coffee machine. It wasn’t always clear that I’d been asked to decide anything. I simply figured I’d been listening to colorful commentary about issues that team members were working to resolve.

When a business is growing fast, decisions can get lost in the fray — especially if it’s unclear that a decision even needs to be made. The result, for our company, was that initiatives would stall without my ...