The Most Expensive Decision a Leader Makes (It's Not the Wrong One)

As a leader, you are forced to make decisions every day and all day long. But you— have you ever reflected that the most expensive decision that you make, it's not the wrong decision, is the refusal to be first? Think about that. The most expensive decision is not the wrong decision, is your refusal to be first. Let me tell you a story of what happened to me so you can reflect on yourself and we can build some strategies so it doesn't happen to you. Several years ago, I was the head of innovation for the Norwegian tax authorities. Skatte Taten, if you're Norwegian. And me and my team, great team, great people. We worked together on many important projects. But one project that I worked on specifically with the University of Berkeley in California in the United States was I identified that No public sector in the world had a leadership program. They had these token leadership programs they call leadership programs. You attend a seminar, maybe something offsite, but I mean a foundational leadership program that built leaders from scratch, that took leaders from different parts of the public sector, brought them together, gave them the not just tools, but the mindset, the philosophy, the education. So I worked with Berkeley for 6 months with the head dean of one of the schools, and she worked directly with the head of Berkeley, the president of the University of Berkeley, getting permission. She and I interviewed all these different professors, and we put together a program, a 6-month pro— well, sorry, sorry, a 6-week program that the top leaders in Norway from the public sector— we're talking about public sector— the top leaders in Norway from the public sector would travel to Berkeley for 6 weeks, attend 6-week course, come back to Norway, and then they would go on a rotation to all the different— in Norwegian it's called etats— to all the different branches of the public sector. So you're from water, you're from fish, you're from forestry, you're from public services, you're from all these different parts of public sector. We would have leaders from each attending that course, and then they would go on a rotation period, being a top leader in each one of these different public sectors for one year. This rotation of leaders. And at the end of that year, what would your public sector look like? You're trained by the smartest and the best school in the world, number one school in the world, University of Berkeley, right? Go Bears, right? Then you're in a rotation program to all the different parts of public sector, leading them, getting insights, working with the different cultures and the people. But when you're rotating these top leaders throughout the year, the cultures that are diverse all become one. The public sector that is all silo-based becomes one. The culture of Norway and leadership becomes one. 1 powerful program. Berkeley was excited. I was excited. I presented it to the top leaders of the Norwegian tax authorities, the top 12, 14 people. You know, they had the big table. We had the, the head of the Norwegian tax authorities back then. I'm not name dropping. That's not the purpose of this. And I stood there and I presented everything. When I was done presenting, everyone looked at me like— I stood there proud. Yeah, this is innovation. I'm the head of innovation. My group is the innovation group for the Norwegian tax authorities. We're the only innovation group in all of Norway. The Norwegian tax authorities are known to be innovative, right? They digitalize all the tax services. If you didn't know, we don't fill out our taxes. It's all digitalized. We get a report of all our taxes pre-filled in and we just go, matter of fact, you don't even have to do check, don't do anything, and it's just approved naturally. Norwegian tax authorities are decades or multi-decades, 'cause some tax authorities are not even there, US IRS, right? They're not even close to that, ahead of the rest of the world. What this type of innovation is supposed to come out of Norway. Norway's supposed to lead the world with this. And this is what I was proud of and me, saying head of the Norwegian Tech Innovation Group, right? The only innovation group in Norway. This is what I'm supposed to do. These are my KPIs. This is what I'm producing. After my presentation, they took a break. Everybody talked in the hallways as they do, you know, in these meetings, the big decision meetings, the leader group meetings. This is what's done every week or every time these leader groups have meetings. And then they came back and I had the president, the managing director of Norwegian Tax Authorities back then, came back and looked at me straight in my face and said, Thomas, we cannot be first. No, we will not fund this. We do not approve this project. We cannot be first. What do you think about that answer? We cannot be first. What was the cost of that answer? What is the cost of that mindset? You as a leader, how many opportunities have you been in to approve a project or an idea that has no historical precedent, president, presidents, No one's ever thought this idea before. You never heard this idea before. There is no case studies to back it up. You have to have a leap of faith. You have to be a leader in that moment and believe in your people and the person who's presenting to you that this is the idea. This is actually like just another Monday for the venture capitalist world out of Silicon Valley, right? That's how every major tech company— Yahoo, Yahoo, dating myself— Facebook, Meta, Google, OpenAI, Tesla, they all got funded with their crazy ideas back then to to a bunch of leaders who then said, wow, I've never heard of this. This is the idea. How many times have you been in that situation and you said, we can't be first? Better question is, how many times you've been in that situation and you said yes? This is that idea. That's leadership. That's what you're paid for. It is easy to be a leader when times are good and everything is fine. As a leader, as an innovator myself, I don't mind if I work for a company and I work for you and I work for— in this example, I work for New Zealand Tech Authorities. I work for them. They could take all the credit. I don't care. I want to bring birth to my baby, this idea that me and my team worked on so hard that we can see will not only change Norway, but change the whole world. It will set the example to finally fix the public sector worldwide. We take the risk, we do it first, we are the shining light, but the whole world benefits. The whole world understands that leadership and public sector are synonymous, which it That's not true today. How many times were you in the position to change the world, and how many times you didn't step up? Or how many times you did step up? And you're sitting there, standing there, walking with your dog, whatever you're doing while listening to me, and you are proud as hell. Your shoulders are— you feel so good about yourself, right?, or you have the reality that you feel like crap about yourself. Your job as a leader to take risk. Your job as a leader is to lead. It's built into the word of leadership. Lead. You are to lead your people. You're not just to just look out, have your people look up to you. Your people are always looking up to you, not to admire you. They're looking up to you like a child looks up to their parents and go, Mommy, Daddy, I'm hungry, which means give me food. They look up to you for guidance, for supervision, to fill in the gaps that they cannot fulfill feel for themselves. What decision have you made today, or you're going to make, that fulfills the need that other people did not have the capabilities of, but you do? That's your job. It's scary, it's risky, it's uncomfortable, but that's your job. Your job is not to take credit all the time when things are fine. Your job is to lead when things suck. It's difficult, it's uncomfortable, but on the other side of it is amazing because you took the risk. You take the credit. It's all you. You can do this. This is why you're here. This is why you were born. This is why you got the job. This is why they look up to you. They look up to you, to you, not anyone else, to you. How do you get through those moments? Because those are triggering moments, those moments when you have to make that decision and you feel like almost you feel naked, you feel like you're uncomfortable. I don't— I don't— if it's a technology decision, not a technology person, how are you going to make a decision about AI? If you haven't even used AI, but everybody in the room, you know, you're the leader, you're supposed to be using AI, so you should be no AI. I'm not picking on you. It's reality. This is the way it is today. How do you make that decision? You make that decision not from I'm an expert in AI. You make that decision because you're a leader and you go, this is the best for my people. This is the best for the country. This is the best for our clients. This is the best for me. I have learned one thing when it comes to leadership, and this is really, really important. In those moments where I have to make a decision that is really, really uncomfortable, you know, you gotta make thousands of decisions. I'm making decisions all the time, all the time. But every once in a while I'm presented with something that really makes me uncomfortable, really makes me uncomfortable. And if I know, you know, I get emotional and I go, No, no way. Hell no. No, no. When I have that feeling inside of me, I've learned something. First of all, I don't behave that way. That's number one. Number two is I pause and I think to myself, what's triggering me? Why is this making me so uncomfortable? And then with all the years of doing this, I learned the most important thing is making me uncomfortable because I have to learn something. This is pushing my boundaries. This is making me see life from a different angle. This is making me see something that I haven't seen before. This is actually undoing my foundation of my methodology, my thinking processes, my governance, my— the way I see the world, the way I've always built my career, my whatever, my life. If this is right, everything I built on is fundamentally wrong. And I smile. I go, I gotta approve this one. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Let's do this. I go, yes. I give my approval, whatever. You approve those. You approve those not just for the people who worked tirelessly on that project, who were up all last night with the slide deck or the demo, making sure it works or making sure the presentation was pristine and who standing in front of you sweating like crazy and nervous as hell. You don't improve it just for them. You do improve it for them, God bless them, right? You improve it for you because you're going to grow and the world's going to change because you stood up to lead. You were a leader for yourself, you were a leader for them, you were a leader for your people. You just changed the world by changing you. And by telling that group of people that are standing in front of you with a face of, please approve my idea, please approve my project, please approve my startup— by you saying yes to them, you're saying indirectly to them, I believe in you, I see you, I believe in you. I trust you. Those magic words that everyone wants to hear. And you as a leader, you have the power to change someone's life, fulfill them, give them what they need, give them what we all want. And at the same time, benefit your company, benefit your project, benefit the country of Norway, benefit the world and every public sector in the world, which is, if you look at it from a population point of view, you're talking about, depending upon the country, over 20% of the population of the planet. Everybody works in the public sector everywhere, at least in the Western world. That's a huge number. But when you say no, you just said no to changing the world to 20% of the entire population of the Western world. Do you know how many hundreds of millions of people we're talking about? Do you know how many? It's probably a billion people you just let down. You just denied them progress, innovation, new job, new opportunities. A mommy and daddy coming home proud what they do. A son or daughter finishing, getting a job, finishing a job interview and getting a job and say, I'm working for this new company, this new idea. All these things that come to birth when you say yes. Do you know when you are innovative? I have my own definition, it's short and sweet. You know you're innovative when everybody hates you. Because if you're truly innovative, you're the first person in the world to have that idea. And now you have to convince 8 billion people about your idea. Nobody's gonna like that. No one's ever thought what you thought before. No one's ever heard these words before. Nobody's ever connected these thoughts before. Human beings don't like change. You truly want to consider yourself innovative, then you're not going to be liked. You truly want to be a great leader, you're not going to be liked. But your job is to lead, lead people through. Like in the military, you lead them through the most difficult situations to win that situation. As a leader in the, in the corporation and your company, you're to lead through difficult situations. It is difficult. It is about you. You are the target. You're the one everybody's looking at. You stand strong. And you lead. You're not supposed to be liked. But at the end, when you are successful and this becomes recognized, you're going to be overly liked. Congrats. But if you don't take the decision, if you don't say yes, nothing happens. And the world will just keep on going. 5 minutes later, everything's the same that it was. But if you take that risk and be a true leader, you have changed the world 5 minutes later, and it will never go back because of you. I'm not saying, yeah, say yes to all the crazy ideas. I'm saying, look at who you are. What's triggering you in these moments? Why do you feel what you feel? Why do you say no when you say no? Pause. Think about it. Why am I so emphatically saying no to this? If I said yes to this, they would be happy. They would work tirelessly to make this happen. How many people would benefit from this? How many of our clients? How many of our— what is the spin-off effect? And I would grow. Say yes to you, for you, and change the world. I'm Thomas Anglero. If what I've said resonates with you, makes you think, and you want to keep the conversation going. I work with a small group of leaders, CEOs, and boards, and I'd love to talk to you. You could contact me at my email, which is thomas@anglero.com, or you go to my website, anglero.com, and contact me there. This is an important conversation. It's a conversation about you. It's about a conversation, how you lead. It's a conversation about what you're made of. It's a conversation about you changing the world. And if you haven't changed the world, it's not too late. That's why you're in a position you're in. But do it from your heart. Do it from your core. Do it from a perspective of I'm uncomfortable, but I'm willing to be uncomfortable to change the world, to benefit humanity, to benefit my client, to benefit this situation, to benefit that startup, this group that needs support. I'm willing to take the discomfort and sacrifice my comfort for the benefit— betterment of my people. Welcome to leadership. You're the one. Until the next time.