A Guide To Improving Your Executive Decision Making

Working as an executive can be a tough job. At small firms, executive decision-making can be the difference between growth and bankruptcy. At larger corporations, executives yield immense amounts of power and responsibility. It is up to them to make the right calls to steer their organization in a successful direction. If guided poorly, there are millions of dollars at stake, thousands of jobs and perhaps, millions of unhappy customers. Certainly, you may want to consider executive team building exercises.

Top Execs Make Mistakes

No doubt, top executives have made mistakes. They make financial mistakes, marketing mistakes and other mistakes in various departments. For example, Steve Jobs once angered a majority of the most passionate Apple fans upon decreasing the price of an iPhone. However, he was able to appease them and offer a refund on phones that were recently bought. Either Steve, or someone smart at Apple (and we know there is a lot of smart people there), realized it is not a good idea to make your customers angry.

Learning That Lesson The Hard Way

Unfortunately, TBS Network might be learning this lesson the hard way. Many executives do not successfully learn how to treat customers properly even in the top business schools. As a part of “restructuring” of the network, they have pulled many of their original series tv shows. Most recently, they cancelled Ground Floor, a top business tv show series based on Skylar Astin playing the role of a young man in the world of finance, and the rest of life. The show offered an interesting twist an insight to finance, relationships and comedy. With over 1.8 million viewers, the ratings were average. So, why cancel?

 

Simply, cancelling the show is just poor executive decision making. Clearly, the executives calling the shots do not have an appreciation for all the work and development that went into creating a new original series that people like. Or worse, they do not have an appreciation for the 1.8 million viewers who decided to take the risk and fall in love with a new series. What happens after you just pissed off 1.8 million people? They tend to not trust you anymore. In fact, they probably will never take a chance on a new show of yours again.

Angry Audience

Furthermore, the show had a solid season. In my humble opinion, people were just starting to watch Ground Floor with their friends and family members. It is highly likely that TBS actually made the executive decision to kill the show right as it was about to take off. But, there’s no way to prove it anymore. Except, when TBS fails to come up with any more successful new original series because they already angered their “would be” audience, just like dropshipping companies frequently anger would be customers with their broad shipment arrival windows.

Executive Decision Coaching

It is no wonder why executive decision coaching, executive decision making and game theory have so much research behind them. For all the owners and executives out there, put the customer first. If you will be making many of them angry, taking that step is probably not the best executive decision. After all, the biggest breakthroughs and successes come from improving what you have, not quitting.

Executive Decision Making Styles

It seems that TBS execs practiced the wrong executive decision making style based on contribution margin. But, if you do not know that there are multiple styles of decision making, you may not have been aware of that. If you want to be able to make the best decisions for your business, you need to know the very basics. There are multiple decision making styles that you should be aware of.

  • Decisive
  • Hierarchic
  • Integrative
  • Flexible

If you want to be able to improve your decision making abilities for business, learn up on these four styles of decision making. Then, you will be better able to decide which one is right for your business needs. You may want to change up your decision making style if things go wrong, too. Learning about the types of executive decision making will help to prepare you for any question that comes your way.

Decisive

The decisive decision making style is identified by its urgency. Decisive decision makers always act as if time is of the essence. They get things done as quickly as possible consistently. They also like to stick to a plan. Decisive decision making applies a single course of action without much information to support the decision. This type of decision making is good to use in emergency situations, like dealing with supply chain risks, or for clear communication of health and safety decisions.

TBS, you may want to hire me for business consulting because clearly you guys were out of touch with the market on this call.

Welcome Team Suggestions

Furthermore, business owners make the best executive decisions when they hear from their team. After all, most business decisions either revolve around the company’s employees or directly impact them on one level or another. With this being said, the best insight often comes from those employees. In order to improve your executive decision making, welcome suggestions from both your executive team and the rest of your employees.

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