Leadership Wise

CHAPTER 5Check Yourself Before You Wreck Yourself

In Chapter 4, we ended right at the point where we had what's required to sort options and make a decision.

In this chapter, I'd like to discuss covering your ass. How do you minimize the likelihood of failure for your decision? Pull more data!

How do you minimize the consequences of making a wrong decision? Iterate, learn, and take “two-way doors” (we'll define that shortly).

And how do you use your colleagues to check all your homework? That's the “premortem.”

You can call it “second guessing yourself,” but if you've got more data, you've got more input from your colleagues, and you're going with options that have less inherent risk, then second guessing is just good business. “Measure twice, cut once,” right? (I know, I know.)

With each decision you make, how intensely you use the tools and approaches in this book can be modulated. If you're making a super important decision, please take your time and use more of the tools I'll present in this chapter. Less important decision? What we've done through Chapter 4 is more than enough.

Going Deeper with Data

Whenever making an important decision, one pass over the options that can be exceptionally helpful is “getting more data.”

“No shit, Sherlock,” is probably what you're thinking right now. Anyone who has the time and capacity to pull data that helps inform an important decision before making it would naturally do so.

Two thoughts then: First, sweet! Glad we're on the same ...