Making Good Decisions

hello my name is Gary Shotton and today we’re going to talk about making decisions you know we operate a smaller business here compared to many of our customers and and where I work for a while and a big corporation and I noticed something that the bigger the corporation it seems that it’s it’s harder to make decisions it’s harder for the company to make decisions it’s harder for someone to step out on the limb and make a decision and sometimes it’s protecting territory sometimes it’s protecting your job because you know if you make a critical decision based on the facts you have and if the wrong decision and it doesn’t work you know that could cost you a job and so it kind of slows the whole process down the bigger the company the bigger the corporation is they’re just really not easily maneuvered through the decision making process until someone steps up and makes a decision you know I’m in a smaller company and I am on the big questions i am the decision maker so i know this for a fact that that i’m able to make decisions on big purchases of equipment and my machinery suppliers are very happy with me because when i get interested in buying a piece of equipment I don’t go to committee I do see my internal guidance and and the facts are involved with the decision but I can make that decision and if it’s very freeing to my suppliers because they don’t have to go to eight weeks of committee meetings and the committee to kind of vote and decide after a long laborious process whether or not to buy a piece of equipment so I have an advantage I describe it this way in many ways it’s kind of like that big corporation is like ass large steam ship on the ocean you know if you’re going to turn that steamship you start arcing way out you’re going to have a big arc you know it’s not going to turn very fast but I find it a little bitty speedboat shoot with it just a quip of my hand I can’t in that little speed boat and go circles around a big big steamship so I tell my customers sometimes I understand what’s going on I can make the decision and I honestly think that gives us money or gives us business because we can decide and get it done where it doesn’t go through committee and through too many procedures now how can you get people working for you to make decisions and to free them up to make decisions because you know if I don’t allow my workers of people in my company to make the decisions necessary to do their job then I’ve slowed our company down as far as growth as far as maneuvering through this business process we all know that if it’s a large financial decision you know they’re probably don’t have that freedom to commit me to something financially that’s large but they have the freedom to bring it to my attention they have the freedom to sell their case and I’ll listen to them what I found through this whole process that is if you will give your employees the workers your team all of the critical information needed to make a decision that they will actually make a they will consistently make a very good decision they’ll actually make a better decision that I would make if they have all the information where a bad decision is made is when you had lacking information or or missing information or or you just didn’t know it’s only fair when you make a mistake to go back or what appears to be a mistake and go back in time and say hey with the information I had at the time was this a good decision with the information that I had at the time if I had that same scenario presented to me what I have made the same decision if the answer is yes you’re fine you’re going to be okay you’re going to miss sometimes but but if you wait and second guess I hate this in the political realm I mean everybody in the political realm then I’m not going to go too strong in this seems to be covering their political career and so they don’t make key decisions when they need to because they don’t want to go on record and then they wait till six or eight months later when a decision is made by one liter i’m not talking about any one particular a political party or not it’s true about both in the United States and around the world and so you wait six or eight months and then you say shoot why did you make that decision and what was the information that the person had at the time they made the decision that’s only fair we want people to make good decisions it’s helpful in my business to know I cannot make any one part I have no ability in this machine shop to make a single part so I am relying on other people I have a quality department the measures I actually have no business or ability to accurately measure a dimension on any one of these parts I could fumble through but I wouldn’t be confident ever so I’m relying on other people i’m relying on them to make good decisions my second-in-command the person that works closest to me I have to be sure that I’m not stepping on top of them and I’m giving them by the way I’m one of those that could micromanage so I have to watch that so basically we’ll give your people all the information are the ability to get that information and encourage them to make the decisions that need to be made and then go forward and support them and not throw them under the bus if something goes wrong well I hope this helps i hope you are enjoying these teachings and i hope that down the line you would share these with others that might be interested so that’s how we spread the word thank you