What is wrong with hard decisions?

There is a saying that I always liked:

Easy decisions lead to a hard life, hard decisions lead to an easy life.

It’s an oversimplification, but what the hell!

Businesses can get stuck because, somewhere at the top, the leaders are locked in a cycle of favouring the easy decisions:  stick to the plan, do what worked before, add more features, hire more salespeople, seek consensus on everything ... and so on.

Some leaders think that being caught facing hard decisions is a bad sign. When you are faced with dropping a product line, or firing a friend, or publicly reversing a policy you previously implemented, it comes with the tacit accusation of failure. Worse than that, you may be accused of lacking confidence in your business, not sticking to your guns, or simply being weak. So naturally, people might feel their job is to avoid or even prevent the need for hard decisions altogether.

For what it’s worth, I always thought a business never really felt real until you were down in the dirt, making the hard decisions, often with limited certainty. 

So, try to celebrate and embrace the arrival of a hard decision. It could be a sign you are breaking through to the next level and things are finally getting real.