In a moment of self-pity during his infamous reign as the leader who kicked off the Great Depression, Herbert Hoover once confided to friends: “I’m tired of making decisions–one after another all day long. My view of heaven is a place where no one ever has to make a decision.”
Ever felt like Hoover? Most of us have. Especially in times like these when circumstances force us to wallow in economic uncertainty. Psychologists find that while deliberating over a decision we feel about as chipper as we do in the waiting room at the dentist’s office. Our self-esteem and optimism dip, while our anxiety climbs.
Choosing Between Right and Right
Making decisions is so mentally exhausting because we often face multiple attractive (or unattractive) options. Ethics professor at the Harvard Business School, Joseph Badaracco wisely points out that the hardest decisions are not those pitting right against wrong. In reality, the toughest choices are between right and also right. In the case of Right vs. Right, your best option is to pre-determine the verdict by checking your Decision Pulse.
Your Decision Pulse is that one special attribute that makes your team or organization unique. It is the super-criterion that carries ultimate veto power over every other criterion. For example, when it was founded The Home Depot’s Decision Pulse was “whatever it takes to serve the customer.” That meant store employees were expected to do counterintuitive things like forego making a bigger sale if they could better serve the customer with a less expensive item. It also meant that when Timothy McVeigh bombed the Federal Building in Oklahoma City in 1993, district store manager Rich Lloyd could-- without hesitation--decide to overlook his stores’ profit margins for that quarter, and immediately round up over $70,000 worth of garbage cans, garbage bags, shovels and masks, and then truck it all to the bomb site just 45 minutes after the explosion. Only after he donated the merchandise did Lloyd call the corporate office in Atlanta to tell them about the choice he already made.
The Home Depot’s whatever-it-takes Decision Pulse is not just some fluffy customer service platitude. It was a very calculated strategic maneuver. To get their low-margin big box hardware concept off of the ground, co-founders Bernie Marcus and Arthur Blank knew they couldn’t just be a player in their markets. Instead, they had to achieve “market dominance.” Marcus once explained to a friendly competitor in Florida that if each geographic region in which they operated was like a backyard swimming pool, then The Home Depot intended to be Jaws.
How to Find Your Pulse
You could argue that the every essence of leadership is ensuring that your people make great judgments even when you aren’t there to tell them what to do. Whether you’re leading a small team, a large department, or an entire organization, by identifying and communicating your Decision Pulse will dramatically improve the choices your people make. Here’s how to do it:
1. List all of the reasons why a customer would choose you over a competitor.
What is it that your team does exceptionally well that your target market truly cares about? For example, Southwest Airlines defines their Pulse by price. According to a story told by James Carville and Paul Begalla, company co-founder Herb Kelleher says that above all else, Southwest is “The low fare airline.” That drives every decision they make from which airports to use down to what kind of food to serve passengers (Spoiler Alert: it’s a small bag of peanuts). Of course they also do many other things extremely well. They routinely outperform the competition on timeliness of arrivals and departures. Their flight attendants and gate agents are some of the funniest in the industry. But you won’t catch Southwest blowing cash on frivolous luxuries…like food. They know that low fares are what their customers value most. Everything else is just icing on the peanuts.
The Home Depot stands out through quality of service. Domino’s Pizza was built on speed of service. Southwest Airlines differentiates on price. What about you? Are you affordable; convenient; reliable; reputable? List all of the ways in which you might be special.
2. Put a “B” for “Best” next to each area in which you can truly excel.
You don’t have to currently be the best in those areas, but you should already have many of the pieces you need in order to eventually become the best. If you have to completely overhaul your team or start a bunch of brand new divisions or factories, then this probably isn’t the place for you. The point is to identify in which areas you already possess the raw materials to be #1. (HINT: Be sure to consider not only your strengths, but also competitors’ weaknesses.)
3. Rank your B's.
Rank each of the “B” items based on how effectively each area can differentiate your team. Whichever principle you rank first is your Decision Pulse.
4. Get everyone’s finger on the pulse.
The last step is about getting your people to clearly understand how this Pulse guides their daily decisions. One of the most proven methods for doing this is by employing a process called “diverse analogical training.” This ugly academic phrase consists simply of telling two or three different stories that illustrate one general principle. One of my clients accidentally came up with the perfect training stories for his team by trying to explain to me specifically what his team did that was different than the competition. Thanks to those accidental case studies, his team can now quickly and easily apply the Decision Pulse to completely novel decisions.
I won’t promise that finding your Decision Pulse will take you and your people to some Hooverian Heaven. Indeed you will still be required to make decisions each day. But if you find your Pulse, and check it regularly, you will be a lot further from Hoover’s Hell.
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