Indecision - A Powerful Way Out is an excellent book that will help you overcome the fear of making a decision. It shows you how to set a culture of indecision, how to embrace a full range of views and how to create a sincere search for answers.
Creating a decisive culture requires that leaders model decisive dialogue with employees, provide honest feedback and follow through. Without these practices, it is easy for the organization to become indecision-prone. A culture of indecision is also a culture of underperformance. It is easy for employees to feel rushed to meet performance goals, to avoid difficult tasks, and to be unable to take decisive action.
In addition to setting the tone, a culture of decisiveness requires leaders to engender intellectual honesty and trust among individuals. This requires leaders to provide honest feedback, to build trust in connections between people, and to help people resolve conflicts. It also requires a leader to be able to provide constructive feedback, to reward and coach high-achievers, and to coach struggling employees.
The leader must also model decisive dialogue with employees, provide honest and constructive feedback, and follow through. The most important factor for growth and productivity of knowledge workers is dialogue. Dialogue enables people to share information, to raise disagreements, to challenge assumptions, and to redirect behaviors. Dialogue provides the foundation of work in an organization, and can result in competitive advantages.
Creating a decisive culture requires follow-through and feedback. Leaders need to model an open dialogue with their employees and provide appropriate feedback. Failure to do so encourages indecision and destroys the discipline of execution. Successful leaders use feedback to coach struggling employees and reward those with high performance. The benefits of a decisive culture are a more engaged and empowered workforce and a decisive organization.
The step in transforming a culture of indecision is to set the tone. Leaders should engender an honest, intellectually honest dialogue. This involves a sincere search for answers, tolerating unpleasant truths, and pointing the way to a course of action. Decisive dialogues are not easily duplicated. Creating a culture of decisive behavior requires inner strength, emotional fortitude, and operational experience.
It is to design a robust social operating mechanism that focuses on honest dialogue. This requires a four-part process, which includes a clear line of accountability, appropriate people and feedback, feedback and rewards, and sanctions.