Unlock Better Decisions: What Self-Management Teaches Leaders

Leadership often comes down to one thing: decision-making. Interestingly enough, some of the best insights on decision-making actually come from self-management.

Self-management doesn’t eradicate the need for leadership, it just distributes it in an intentional way. Regardless of whether you’re ready to embrace that, there’s a lot that self-management teaches us about making better decisions.

Clarity of roles, responsibilities and decisions

Self-managing structures usually provide much more clarity on roles and responsibilities. There is no one person to default to when it comes to decisions.

Rather than a hierarchy centered around people, this is a hierarchy centered around purpose. What is the decision we’re trying to make, which role holds the decision-making responsibility for that, who are the stakeholders impacted? These kinds of questions are asked and answered explicitly.

Regardless of your organization’s structure, it’s worth taking time to clarify the roles and decision rights within your team. This isn’t about writing down all the possible decisions that could happen and who owns them, it’s about building the habit of clarifying where decisions sit in an intentional way and having that be centered around the role rather than a person and whatever power they might hold.

Next time a decision comes up, instead of asking who should make that decision, instead ask, which role should own the decision?

The power of asking for objections

Self-management focuses on consent, rather than consensus. You’re not trying to get everyone to agree to a decision. Instead, you’re proactively checking in with key stakeholders to see if they have an objection to the direction or solution you’re proposing.

You are deliberately asking for input and working together to make a decision better. This process brings a certain degree of objectivity that often gets lost in politics.

Getting into the practice of asking for objections helps you bring that into the mix, regardless of the politics at play.

Next time you’re making a decision, ask your team, “is this safe to try?”

Taking a test and learn approach

Finally, self-management rests on a foundation of experimentation and iteration. The starting point is that it’s not always possible to know the right decision or way forward. So instead of trying to channel a crystal ball, you break decisions down into experiments and learn through action.

You try something, see what happens, learn quickly and evolve continually.

The next time you’re stuck in a team meeting, ask yourselves, what’s a small action we can take to test our hunch?

We need to start reimagining how decisions are made. Given the pace of change, we can’t just rely on escalating decisions to get answers. Regardless of whether you choose to have managers as part of your organization’s design or not, it’s important to get into the practice of clarifying where decisions sit, asking for objections proactively and experimenting and iterating.