Decisiveness is a quality of effective executives, but it is one of the rarest traits in most. Everyone likes to say, "I am decisive." Very few people really are. They wait until they are forced into a decision or until the decision is made for them.
Lately I've been accumulating clever ways people avoid making a decision. There is no dearth. You can see them every day. For example, there is the fellow who never admits he's read the memo before the meeting. He claims ignorance and waits until he sees which way the wind is blowing. Then there is the executive who sits through all the discussion and comes up at the climax with, "I'm going to go along with the decision, but if we had time I could point out a couple of things that could go wrong." No matter what goes wrong, it would be one of those, too.
The worst offender is the executive who talks five minutes on both sides of the question and then emphatically announces, "That's what I think." Oh, no, there is one worse then he. He is the fellow who sits next to him and says, "I agree with Joe."
Actually, decisiveness is a matter of the will. I think I can illustrate it with a true story. I was on the West Coast with Mobil spending a few days. Being anxious to get home I caught the 11:30 American flight back to Chicago and on to Cincinnati. When I got to the check-in gate a large crowd was to waiting to load. Wanting to be courteously sociable, I got on first… to get out of their way, of course. People kept coming on the plane until every seat was taken except for the one next to me.
However, just before the door closed a terrific guy 6'3" or more with big, broad shoulders and a flat stomach came running on the plane and sat down beside me. He shouldn't have done that! Why should he make me uncomfortable all the way to Chicago as I sat there with my 225 pounds of solid blubber? However, I recognized him as Charlton Heston and so started the conversation by saying,
"Mr. Heston, you are in wonderful physical shape."
He said, "I have to be in my business."
I replied, "I wish I could be, too, but I have to work."
"Well," he said, "I have to work, too, but I can stay in this kind of shape on 17 minutes a day."
He had no right to say that. That was not sociable. I've got 17 minutes a day. He should have talked about half a day down at the studio gym or something that's totally unavailable to me.
For 30 minutes I sat and stewed in my own fat, but whenever I'm wrong I try to avoid admitting it through ingenuity. So, I said,
"But Mr. Heston, I travel a lot."
He said, "So do I."
Then I asked, "What do you do about it when you travel?"
He said, "It's very simple. I go into a hotel room, take my luggage off the luggage rack, sit down, take my luggage off the luggage rack, sit down on the rack, put my toes under the bed and do back bends."
I want you to know it's been some time since fat Fred sat on a luggage rack in a hotel room with his toes under the bed doing back bends. However, again, when caught in the wrong I don't give up quickly, so I countered,
"What do you do about your shoulders?"
He said, "I roll under the bed and push the bed up in the air."
Now what is the difference between Heston and Smith? You recognize it all too quickly. I saw the real difference in a survery recently which indicated there was only one definable difference between successful and unsuccessful people. The unsuccessful say, "I should — I ought to — I plan to — I'm going to, but never get around to it. The successful say, "I will." They make the decision and take action. They do it.
As you think back over this story, where do you need to make a decision? Where are you making excuses? I hope that you will review the story and say, "I will."
