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Mastering the Art of Decision-Making Leadership

By: Jeremy Alexis

What makes someone a great leader? It’s not just charisma, strategic vision, or even experience—it’s the ability to make consistently good decisions, and to build a team that can do the same. In this post, we explore a robust framework for developing decision-making as a core leadership skill, with insights drawn from basketball, military special forces, and community organizing.

Take a moment. Think about three things at work that you’re known for. Imagine your direct reports, your teams, or colleagues answering this question about you.

Are you happy with those answers? Do these traits actually make you a good leader?

If making consistently good, fair decisions made your list, congratulations—you’re an outlier. Data on effective decision-making is bleak: at best, only half of all leaders are good at it, and some studies put that figure as low as 15%. Yet, making good decisions may be the most crucial skill for any leader. When someone says, “That person is a good leader,” what they usually mean is, “That person makes good decisions.”

Leaders wear many hats. Sometimes, you’re an economist, efficiently allocating scarce resources. Other times, you’re a therapist, managing morale and emotional well-being. Occasionally, you’re Alec Baldwin’s closer from Glengarry Glen Ross—securing opportunities at all costs. And yes, sometimes, no matter the role, you might just need to channel a little Darth Vader.

At the core of each of these roles is decision-making.

But making good decisions is getting tougher. The landscape is more volatile, cluttered with too much data (often not enough good data), AI-induced disruptions, and tighter timelines. Worse yet, decisions don’t always announce themselves clearly. Often, they slip by disguised as daily tasks or conversations.

Let’s talk basketball for a moment. Bobby Knight, legendary coach of Indiana University's basketball team, was famous for intensity—and one infamous airborne chair. Beyond the theatrics, Knight understood something profound about leadership: trust. He rarely called timeouts during critical final minutes, trusting his players to think and act decisively on their own. Knight believed teams shouldn’t just execute—they should actively decide. Good leaders trust their teams to make smart decisions independently, without constantly calling "timeouts" (or meetings).

Here's the secret: as a leader, you shouldn't be making every decision yourself. It’s inefficient, overwhelming, and risky. Instead, your job is to ensure your team can independently make decisions the way you would. But not all decisions are created equal. A tool called the decision approach matrix helps sort out decision types and how best to handle them.

The matrix has four quadrants:

1. Short-Term, Low-Impact Decisions: These require minimal oversight. Empower your team with a single, clear guiding principle. When I ran 91��Ƭ�� Tech’s IdeaShop prototyping lab, our guiding principle was "dial tone." Just like picking up a phone and always hearing a dial tone, students could rely on equipment always being available and working. Every decision prioritized uptime. Arizona State University uses "scale" as their guiding principle. Team members constantly ask, "Will this scale?" Find your own memorable, singular value.
2. Long-Term, Low-Impact Decisions: Here, supplement the guiding value with rituals. Regular check-ins, after-action reviews, or casual meetings build habits of reflection and adjustment.
3. Short-Term, High-Impact Decisions: This is the adrenaline zone, and it’s scary. Decisions here are urgent and impactful. Take inspiration from pilots who rely on simple checklists during emergencies. The aviation mantra "aviate, navigate, communicate" guides pilots to stabilize the plane first. Similarly, casino blackjack players rely on basic strategy cards to systematically improve outcomes. For your team, identify critical scenarios and develop straightforward checklists to guide rapid responses.
4. Long-Term, High-Impact Decisions: These require a structured decision-quality process involving careful analysis and active leadership. Use robust methodologies to evaluate alternatives and reach optimal outcomes.

A good leader doesn't just make good decisions; they equip their team to make good decisions independently. The best leaders draw lessons from two vastly different yet highly effective environments: community organizing and military special forces.

Community Organizing: Successful leaders build movements that thrive even in their absence. Great organizers:

• Inspire continuous, passionate engagement toward clear goals.
• Use existing strengths and resources effectively rather than seeking impossible capabilities.

Special Forces: In the military, clarity of mission and simplicity of process is everything:

• Leaders model mission-first humility and honor, essential when teams face high-risk tasks.
• Complex environments demand simple processes executed flawlessly and consistently.

Decision-making isn’t just about the decisions you personally make—it's about shaping the environment where great decisions become second nature, even when you're not in the room.