The sweetness of making good decisions

Life has different flavors and fragrances and in terms of decisions, sometimes they leave us with a sweet taste, other times they are a very bitter experience.

How to make the best of the decision-making process? First, let’s understand how it works…

First of all, you need a situation about which you are going to take a decision: It can be a marriage, a new job or just your hair-cut. In any case, you start your process by having different options.

The decision-making process has three main aspects that impact your choices:

1. Past experiences. They are usually definitive about decisions; that is, you will always try to repeat or avoid whatever you have experienced. That can be good or bad, according to the next aspect.
2. Logic. It has an importance in terms of filtering past experiences or understanding them and adapting them to the new context. The more logical someone is the better will be decisions related to fixed or predictable situations and circumstances. Of course, the next aspect will give the final say…
3. Soft side. We all rely on a soft side we all have, which can be a personality trace or the influence of culture, moment and period of time. Intuition or whatever you call this soft side will take whatever logic said and will try to validate or deny it, according to feelings and emotions.

To prevent undesirable consequences, you could add two other aspects or layers to the decision-making process: creativity and spirituality. By using a few techniques, like a brainstorming or a variation, you may challenge your assumptions and find out about other possibilities.

If you go into your own self using meditation or yoga, you may see things really different. That practice is particularly good in decisions which impact will last longer, like the change of a job or something related to your health.

A last thing to remember: after taking a decision, there is no way back. After all, even though you can go back somehow, it is another decision…

Negotiations in times of disruption

2016 will probably be known as the division year. It seemed there were always some problems somewhere where roughly half was in favor and half against. Even though negotiation techniques are so advanced, not much was acquired through that.

All negotiations happen with a basic standard principle:

I want something you don’t want to give me, but I know you can.

You probably want something from me that I don’t want to give you even though I can.

Let’s talk and reach some type of compromise and make a deal.

But nowadays it is much more complex:

I want something you don’t want to give me, but I think you could...

You probably want something from me that I don’t want to give you, or I cannot give you and you think I can.

Let’s struggle, see who is more powerful or who are more in need and reach some type of compromise (we will probably regret later).

These are times of disruption, which means, things are not working in the same paradigm as before and yet, the new paradigm is not working either. Looking at the bright side it is innovation in its extreme; in its dark side, it tends to generate chaos. Does it sound confused? It should…

For instance, the political aspect: in Colombia, many people who voted for YES during the peace process referendum were considered as leftist. However, most of these people I know who did vote YES wouldn’t back up Venezuelan government, which is leftist… Using that logic, any attempt for negotiation based on politics only won’t work.

Due to that, we need an alternative for it, something that takes in account the disruption process we are experiencing:

I understand I have a need or an opportunity to grow, but I am not in tune with you, your needs or opportunities.

Before talking to you, I must understand your side better and see what we both could compromise that wouldn’t hurt either of us. It would be nice if you do the same, otherwise at least my side has to make that endeavor.

We need a space and time to talk, far from the situation, using techniques that help us to reach a final commitment. Probably, it won’t be the perfect deal for neither of the sides, but it can be considered as a first stage of a long-term negotiation; possibly, it will be needed to repeat this many times more until there is satisfactions in both sides, which we hope we would reach.

It is a new era and new talents, new skills and a total new awareness are needed to help the various fragments of the big disruption we are living to reach a point of satisfaction and allow us to keep going.

Do you live to serve?

A saying has been told me many years ago:

If you don’t live to serve, you are not worthy to live

In theory, this is in the Sao Paulo Fire Brigade Headquarter, but I was never able to check the validity of that and yet, I could not agree more with the idea of service as the foundation for a fulfilling life.

In a society focused on the person and personal satisfaction, we got into a cycle of taking and taking that is parallel to a cycle of being dissatisfied and unhappy. However, when you live to serve, something different happens…

The reason is that you can only serve someone if you have something to give the person: a doctor will give her or his knowledge and expertise, a priest will gave others his faith and guidance, a mother will give her time and energy, and so on.

So, when you dedicate yourself to serve others you automatically develop some skills and capacities that otherwise would take too long to being developed.

For instance, if I want to serve others by writing this blog, I need to reflect, to write well, to improve my English (thanks for your patience, by the way!) and make many more efforts so that the person on the other side of the screen can get something out of this, something valuable.

But those skills are not restricted to the task in hand; it will also help me to improve my relationships, to get better professional projects and so on.

By living to serve, automatically you start to feel you are alive, because you are much more than what you used to think you were.

Are you able to see the invisible?

In a leadership parable on leadership, a prince goes to the forest to live for one year. His task: to observe all sounds he could and relate them to his master later. After relating his experience, his master sent him back as he was not content with his disciple’s achievements. After a while hearing the same sounds, the prince started to hear the unheard: a star rising in the sky, a rock moving in the sand…

That tale touched me very deeply, because the key for a good exercise of a leadership is in the unheard, invisible and intangible, those things we just perceive, but there is no measurement to it.

Big data is a big thing nowadays, it is what is making noise, but there is no comparison with the practical effect of small data, those details most programs, institutions and people ignore. Small data is invisible, unheard and intangible, but it is also very powerful: it is the small data that gave many surprises last year with Brexit, Donald Trump’s election and the victory of NO in the Colombia peace process referendum.

Leadership does not mean to leave all of the analysis, strategies and hard decisions aside, but it is time for leaders to focus differently: leaders need to change their focus from analysis to understanding, from strategies to intuition and from unilateral decisions to decisions that are accepted by others.

Otherwise, they too will become invisible.