Bill Gallagher, a scaling coach, works with a CEO who struggles to commit because he keeps adding options. Gallagher explains that decide comes from cide, meaning to kill options. He uses a hat-throwing metaphor to show why leaders need to commit fully instead of keeping escape routes open.
Do you have trouble making clear decisions? Clear, decisive. Do you struggle with that? Like, really committing to something, being decisive? Hi there. I'm Bill Gallagher, Scaling Coach, host of the Scaling Up Business Podcast. And we bring episodes like this. Tips, interviews with gurus, getting real conversations with CEOs who've grown their companies. Every week at scalingcoach.com, iTunes, YouTube, Spotify, Stitcher, wherever you get your audio and video content, we're there. Scalingcoach.com Scaling Up Business Podcast is the show. So I'm working with the CEO. It's been about two years ago now, and this guy seemed to always, like, add more things. Like, more is more, not less is more might have been his motto. He was really afraid to commit to things, both in the job scorecards and the strategy. Always wanted to pile on more explanations and more things like this. And he really struggled with this until he began to notice that this was his instinct and it was really killing his team and started to look at his own leadership style. So the first thing that we had him do is actually interview people about what were his strengths and weaknesses, and he began to listen into some of that. And then working with him over time as a coach, being able to give him feedback. Well, here's the interesting thing. In the word decide, the last four letters in there are C, I, D, E, cide, cd. And that is the root of the word for decision and relates also to homicide, suicide, like, whatever. Right. And what it is that's interesting about that is in that word of deciding something, we kill off the options. We commit ourselves fully to that. There's an old poem. I won't get it right, exactly. But there's this group of, like, Irish or Scottish boys, and they know that in their culture, they can't go home without their hats. Like being hatless. It's cold there, right? Is just a no, no. And they're not affluent, so they commit themselves to doing something difficult by throwing their hats. It said they throw their hats over the fence and therefore committed themselves to getting over the fence. If you've got a hurdle to cross or something to deal with, committing yourself fully, like all in, no out, and knowing that you might tend to muck things up. And it's really great to kill off the options and box yourself into doing something that you know might be difficult, there it is. I hope that's helpful for you and gives you something to think about in your world. Is there an area where you struggle, where you add more instead of less, where you fail to commit, where you create too many options. Hope that's helpful for you, and we'll talk to you again next time. Bill Gallagher scalingcoach.com Thank you.
