**The Power of Mindset and Decision-Making**

In today's fast-paced business world, decision-making is crucial to success. However, many organizations struggle with making effective decisions, leading to suboptimal outcomes. The challenge lies not in accessing data, but in understanding how to apply it in a meaningful way.

**From Data to Decisions**

A company may already possess all the necessary data, but without the right mindset and approach, it's unlikely to make effective decisions. This is where methodology comes in – codifying a process that ensures consistency and accuracy. By going through each step of the methodology, individuals can gain a deeper understanding of how to apply data-driven insights to drive better decision-making.

**The Importance of Practicing Decision-Making**

Until one has gone through all the steps and actually practiced making decisions, it's difficult to develop a real feel for what each step entails. Reading about a methodology or watching a presentation is not enough; hands-on experience is necessary to truly understand its value. This is why workshops and training sessions are essential – they provide an opportunity to put theory into practice.

**Sharing the Methodology**

To share this approach with others, one must first identify who needs to be educated on decision-making. It's essential to find "Kindred Spirits" within an organization who believe that a shift in focus is necessary, from data to decision-making. These individuals can become allies and advocates for change.

**Influencing Others**

To bring about transformation, one must influence others in the organization. This requires emotional intelligence, EQ skills, and the ability to tell compelling stories – often around decisions that have led to negative outcomes. By sharing personal anecdotes and experiences, leaders can create a sense of urgency and encourage others to join them on the path to improvement.

**The Role of Emotional Intelligence**

Making effective decisions is not just about analyzing data; it's also about understanding human emotions and behaviors. Leaders must possess high levels of emotional intelligence to navigate complex organizational dynamics and build support for change.

**A Story from My Career**

I recall working with a CEO who walked into an executive meeting room, knowing that his company was on the verge of collapse. He shared this message with me, saying that most CEOs rely on dumb luck when making decisions – but we can't afford to rely on luck anymore. We need to be more methodical and rigorous in our decision-making processes.

**The Power of Leadership**

The CEO's willingness to confront difficult truths and take bold action was instrumental in transforming the organization. By working with him, I saw firsthand the impact that a single individual can have on an Enterprise when they're willing to challenge the status quo and drive meaningful change.

**The Need for Improvement**

Even if organizations are making progress, there is always room for improvement. The goal should be to increase the "hit rate" of effective decisions – not perfect ones, but high-quality ones that drive growth and success.

**A Message from the Author**

As I reflect on my own career, I realize that decision-making is not just about data analysis; it's about leadership and influencing others. When we take ownership of our decision-making processes and share our approach with others, we can create a ripple effect of positive change within an organization.

In conclusion, effective decision-making is crucial to success in any organization. By adopting a methodology that prioritizes practice, storytelling, and emotional intelligence, individuals can drive meaningful change and transform their Enterprise into a more data-driven, decision-making powerhouse.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enfor organizations who are wanting to get started with being more methodical in their decision- making can you maybe give me an example of like what you do first if you want to implement smarter um what I've been doing with organizations over the years which is they just want to learn the methodology you know so I I I say to businesses and I've done this for professional associations as well as give me I I say give me what your audience would call a use case so give me a use case situation where that maybe a company has already gone through or there the middle of give me all the data and then we take that in a workshop setting and we work through it with people in the audience and we go through all the steps because until you've gone through all the steps and you actually are forced to kind of understand what each step is by practicing it you don't have a really great feel I mean you can read um I wrote an article I did this because I wanted to codify the um the methodology so um cutter um uh was really nice to publish this article for us it's part of the resources that I gave people as well and it goes through the methodology and and what I've I've shared today and um maybe a little bit more depth but just reading it isn't going to get you very far so I think the challenge for everybody here is mindset you got to go find if you think that this is worthwhile if you think that this is worthwhile you have to ask yourself who else do I need to tell this to who else do I need to educate on this and then and I actually wrote a chapter on this for women and analytics kind of like how do you do the grassrs approach to this is go find Kindred Spirits who believe that there needs to be a shift from a sole focus on data to a focus on decision- making go find those Kindred Spirits in your organization kind of you know form your community of Practice Group either decide to use a methodology like ours that we've developed or create your own methodology or find a different methodology and tweak it I don't care what you use and then figure out which EXA Ives in the organization you need to influence I mean it's it's just like you would for anything else now people might be saying to me uh that's not my job I was hired to do XYZ and I'd be like it's anybody can do this I have seen in organizations where a single person has caused tremendous transformation because they've gone and found the right people in the organization who saw the necessity and need to do something and I think that this is the same way you know but but you have to be you have to have pretty Savvy uh emotional intelligence EQ skills right you have to know how to influence people you have to know how to tell the right stories um and the right stories might be around um decisions that we have made that have caused us a lot of Havoc I might be telling stories of pain a lot of pain in organization yeah certainly if the if you're not good at making decisions across your organization I'm sure it's going to be pretty painful and certainly getting people to change how they're making decisions um any kind of change management stuff like that it's got to be uh pretty brutal right but I think that even more so we don't want to admit that we're not really good at decision making absolutely and I suppose very few people make every decision wrong or at least like if that's happening on a corporate level you're going to go out of business pretty soon so um I guess this is just about trying to improve your hit rate trying to improve the fraction of decisions that are good ones well and I remember um very early on in my career the first uh CEO that I worked with um when I was a consultant so this would be 1988 I said that the beauty of it was that he walked in one door of a meeting room with the executives in his um business and I walked in the other door of the room I was the new consultant um that they had hired and he said to me um he said because the business was a cash cow within the larger Enterprise huge Cash Cow they were taking money out of it left and right in head for years and he came in as the new CEO to tell them that they were about to go under that they were no longer going to be the cash cow he figured they maybe had three three to five years maybe three years but that they were going to plummet and that they were going to lose everything now how do you tell that message to see you know people who've been successful right and uh when he and I met separately for the first time he said Miss Silverman I just want to let you know that for most CEOs if they get a decision right it's dumb luck he said we can't use dumb luck anymore we can't rely on dumb luck anymore we have to be much more methodical and rigorous and we were in his organization but we still could not move fast enough and he was correct we downsized that business tremendously and then next I've worked with them for almost five years tremendously um because they took huge hits and it was a and but at least he saw the handwriting on the wall and was willing to do the hard work within his Enterprise given what I'm talking about todayfor organizations who are wanting to get started with being more methodical in their decision- making can you maybe give me an example of like what you do first if you want to implement smarter um what I've been doing with organizations over the years which is they just want to learn the methodology you know so I I I say to businesses and I've done this for professional associations as well as give me I I say give me what your audience would call a use case so give me a use case situation where that maybe a company has already gone through or there the middle of give me all the data and then we take that in a workshop setting and we work through it with people in the audience and we go through all the steps because until you've gone through all the steps and you actually are forced to kind of understand what each step is by practicing it you don't have a really great feel I mean you can read um I wrote an article I did this because I wanted to codify the um the methodology so um cutter um uh was really nice to publish this article for us it's part of the resources that I gave people as well and it goes through the methodology and and what I've I've shared today and um maybe a little bit more depth but just reading it isn't going to get you very far so I think the challenge for everybody here is mindset you got to go find if you think that this is worthwhile if you think that this is worthwhile you have to ask yourself who else do I need to tell this to who else do I need to educate on this and then and I actually wrote a chapter on this for women and analytics kind of like how do you do the grassrs approach to this is go find Kindred Spirits who believe that there needs to be a shift from a sole focus on data to a focus on decision- making go find those Kindred Spirits in your organization kind of you know form your community of Practice Group either decide to use a methodology like ours that we've developed or create your own methodology or find a different methodology and tweak it I don't care what you use and then figure out which EXA Ives in the organization you need to influence I mean it's it's just like you would for anything else now people might be saying to me uh that's not my job I was hired to do XYZ and I'd be like it's anybody can do this I have seen in organizations where a single person has caused tremendous transformation because they've gone and found the right people in the organization who saw the necessity and need to do something and I think that this is the same way you know but but you have to be you have to have pretty Savvy uh emotional intelligence EQ skills right you have to know how to influence people you have to know how to tell the right stories um and the right stories might be around um decisions that we have made that have caused us a lot of Havoc I might be telling stories of pain a lot of pain in organization yeah certainly if the if you're not good at making decisions across your organization I'm sure it's going to be pretty painful and certainly getting people to change how they're making decisions um any kind of change management stuff like that it's got to be uh pretty brutal right but I think that even more so we don't want to admit that we're not really good at decision making absolutely and I suppose very few people make every decision wrong or at least like if that's happening on a corporate level you're going to go out of business pretty soon so um I guess this is just about trying to improve your hit rate trying to improve the fraction of decisions that are good ones well and I remember um very early on in my career the first uh CEO that I worked with um when I was a consultant so this would be 1988 I said that the beauty of it was that he walked in one door of a meeting room with the executives in his um business and I walked in the other door of the room I was the new consultant um that they had hired and he said to me um he said because the business was a cash cow within the larger Enterprise huge Cash Cow they were taking money out of it left and right in head for years and he came in as the new CEO to tell them that they were about to go under that they were no longer going to be the cash cow he figured they maybe had three three to five years maybe three years but that they were going to plummet and that they were going to lose everything now how do you tell that message to see you know people who've been successful right and uh when he and I met separately for the first time he said Miss Silverman I just want to let you know that for most CEOs if they get a decision right it's dumb luck he said we can't use dumb luck anymore we can't rely on dumb luck anymore we have to be much more methodical and rigorous and we were in his organization but we still could not move fast enough and he was correct we downsized that business tremendously and then next I've worked with them for almost five years tremendously um because they took huge hits and it was a and but at least he saw the handwriting on the wall and was willing to do the hard work within his Enterprise given what I'm talking about today\n"