“Incision means to cut into, decision means to cut off.”
I said that in an interview at the LA Tribune Leadership Summit, and I meant it. A real decision cuts off the other options, and waiting for things to settle down is one of them.
Plenty of business owners are waiting for the right market, the right team or the right time before they make their move. Wallace D. Wattles had a line for that back in 1910.
Do not wait for a change of environment before you act; get a change of environment by action.
Wallace D. Wattles, The Science of Getting Rich, Chapter XI, Acting in the Certain Way
A few lines before that he puts it even more simply: “you can act only where you are.” You can’t act in the business you had last year, or in the one you hope to have in five years. You can only act in the one you’ve got, and acting in it is what moves you towards the better one.
Which business are you deciding for?
Are you making decisions based on the business you’ve got today, or the one you want to have tomorrow?
Seriously, try this. Jump forward five years and picture the business you intend to have by then. Now picture the person who leads it. What kind of decisions would that person be making in your seat right now?
That’s what this really comes down to. If you want a better situation, you have to act like the kind of person who knows how to operate in the environment you want to create.
Two steps from Done Beats Perfect
This is very much what I wrote about in my book, Done Beats Perfect. It comes down to two steps.
- You have to decide what you want.
- You have to operate as if you’re the person who knows how to get it.
Operating as if has nothing to do with fake it till you make it, and you don’t have to pretend you know all the answers before you do. In the book I put the catch like this: “You recognise that you are a beginner in your new identity.” It’s a bit like starting a new job. There are things to learn and skills to build, and you get on and learn them.
So be willing to learn. Be open-minded about trying new things. And be honest with yourself about where you are and the progress you’re making.
Nigel Risner and I talked through where operating as if came from on the podcast, in Who Do You Need To Become? The question in that title is the one that matters here. Are you learning the skills the leader of the business you want would need?
Maybe it’s time you started making decisions for the business you want, from inside the one you’ve got.
