There’s a saying that the more things change, the more they stay the same, which we will aptly apply with a marketer’s sensibility to the skill of decisiveness. Whatever your business focus and whether you spearhead the marketing effort for a company or client, the critical marketing decisions you make influence your ability to create, communicate and deliver value to target audiences in a competitively advantaged way that scores a win or a fail.
In a digital era with new realities and exciting opportunities of real-time engagement, it is, at times, tempting to bypass a thoughtful and measured approach to decision-making. Before you decide on an approach of “Do it now, deal with the consequences later,” let’s open a chapter of Leadership Secrets of Attila the Hun by Dr. Wess Roberts for timeless counsel on decisiveness. Below you’ll find several excerpts just perfect for marketing “chieftains.”
- Wise is the chieftain who never makes a decision when he doesn’t understand the issue.
- The circumstances of a given moment are not to be used as an excuse for being unprepared to make decisions incumbent to a chieftain. Indecisiveness is bred by failure to accept the responsibility of office – be it great or small.
- A chieftain who fails to accept full decision-making responsibility – or who blames others for his own bad decisions – is weak and lacking in an essential, inherent quality of leadership.
- Rarely are there perfect decisions. The best decisions are usually the more prudent of the logical alternatives. When you must be overly persuasive in gaining support for your decision, it’s usually a sign of a bad one.
- Next to the importance of knowing when to make a decision stands the insight to know when to forgo making one. Impatient chieftains often precipitate premature action.
- Perhaps the most critical element of decision making is timing. Prompt determination after appropriate deliberation is a worthy principle of decisiveness.
- In selecting an alternative, wise chieftains look for the choice in which the benefits outweigh the risks and costs of the decision.
- Wise chieftains often extract from obscure places the critical elements for making the right decisions.
- Skepticism has value in that it delays premature decision making. When a chieftain can’t make up his mind, it’s worthwhile to restate the problem.
- Chieftains grow to understand that the wisdom of a particular decision can change with time… Improve future decisions by learning from those you’ve already made.
- It takes less courage to criticize the decisions of others than to stand by your own.
To read the entire chapter or book, it is sold on Amazon.com or available as a free download from the Internet Archives. You may also find interest in reading Models for Decision Making, great advice we stumbled upon at creativemarket.com as we were developing this post.
So go forth, be a great leader, make sound decisions and maximize your marketing momentum. We leave you with a classic scene from the Mad Men television series in hopes that the coming week is as easy as Don Draper’s ability to decide and Bert Cooper’s ability to forgive.
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