Decision Making with the “Ladder Rule”
Today on Coffee on Leadership, I want to talk about decision making.
Think of all of these decisions you have made today leading up this training. You’ve probably completely forgotten about some of the decisions you’ve made, while others may be more glaring. As a leader, a big part of our job is to make decisions of all sizes. So how do we make the task easier, more informed, and quicker? By using the Ladder Rule. Grab your cup of coffee and dig in with me on this (almost) ten minute episode of the podcast!
On this episode you’ll hear…
The importance of small and medium scale decisions and how they impact your life
What the “Ladder Rule” is and how it will help you make better, more confident decisions
How to frame a decision to decide its importance and giving yourself space to actually make it
Defining your options and outcomes to make any decision easier and knowing your next best scenario
Ready for more?
Listen in:
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** This is a raw, unedited transcript
Chaili Trentham 00:00
I want to talk about all of these decisions you made leading up to training on this podcast today. Think about it. How many decisions have you made, since you woke up this morning from the decision of when to actually get out of bed and turn off your alarm to when to pick up your phone, when to brush your teeth, what to wear, what to eat, you've made a lot of decisions, right? So Cornell did a research study and found that the average person makes upwards of 35,000 decisions in a single day. 35,000 decisions a day that is so many decisions, they found that 227 of those on average, are made about food alone, we make a lot of decisions. And the reality is sometimes those food decisions are the tricky ones. And that's when we realized that we might be hitting decision fatigue, because we've been at work all day or with our families. And we get down to dinnertime when we can't decide what we want to eat or make for dinner. And we're tired of making decisions. And so even the little decisions can be really complicated. Now, I've spent a lot of time on this podcast talking about values based decision making, which typically comes into play when you're making those big, consequential meaningful decisions. And you want to be focused on your core values when you're making them. But the reality is that could make up one of the big decisions we make in a day. But there are 34,999. Other decisions to be made that maybe are on a smaller scale, are are the medium size decisions of your life. And I want to talk about those because oftentimes, we don't give ourselves the space that we need in those moments for the medium decisions. So I came across an article on ink.com, a year or two ago, that introduced what was called the ladder rule, and how to make decisions and five minutes using this ladder rule. And so we'll link the article in the show notes, but it was published by Jeff Steen. And really he presented this idea of a ladder when you're making any decision and four steps to get from the bottom of ladder to the top rung. And in that, that's when I realized that we have these decisions that we make quickly, or we make using data and information that we've gathered in our lives along the way. But we're not really framing out the decision in a way that we're making it using that data, right, we often just kind of gather ourselves and we're like, Okay, I'm gonna go in this direction and make this decision and send out the email. And we're good to go. But I think in in reframing some of those medium sized decisions, and even some of those bigger decisions, with this latter framework, it gives us the opportunity to make better decisions. And as leaders, I think we're consistently looking for ways to make better, more educated decisions so that we can feel competent in the way that we are communicating that decision outwards to the people that it influences and affects. So here's the ladder rule, broken down in those four categories. Okay, so you're gonna start at the bottom of the ladder, picture yourself standing there, and you're ready to put your foot up on that first rung. And what you need to do with the decision that's in front of you, is frame the decision. And when you're framing the decision, you're deciding if this decision has measurable or noticeable impact on the people around you, your company or society, because the reality is that if that decision is not having a measurable or noticeable impact, it minimizes the weight you need to carry and making that decision, right? And then you're deciding is this decision time sensitive? Those questions help us decide how important and how urgent the decision actually is, right? When we look at the Eisenhower matrix of when can we delegate when can we do something? When do I need to drop something completely, like we're making that decision based on urgency and importance, right. So this is no different than the Eisenhower matrix, which you can look up if you need to. But when we make that decision of is this important is this urgent, then we can move up to the next round, because we know who it's impacting and when the decision needs to be made by sort of framing the decision. So then you take that step up onto the second rung of the ladder, which is creating space to focus by setting aside five minutes to concentrate on that specific decision you need to make. So often we're making a decision in the middle of multitasking or doing 14 other things. And so we don't give ourselves the actual space to really hone in on the decision, we have to remove all the distractions. And so that means closing the door to your office, or going to a quiet space, setting your phone to Do Not Disturb mode, you should never be making a decision while scrolling Instagram, and really giving yourself space to think and to focus. I was just on a trip this past week. And what I found was because I was in a completely different space, and I was in a completely different time zone from people. I was able to really sit and focus on my thoughts and some things I had been thinking through Because I wasn't distracted, right? So in level two, you're creating that opportunity to remove yourself from all distractions. And once you've done that, then you can take your step up to the third rung of the ladder, which is to define your options and outcomes. And this is where you got to do a little bit of the legwork, you got to write down each option in one sentence. So what are the options that you have for this one decision, you're keeping it brief, you're sticking to the facts, you're being objective. And next to each option, that one sentence, you're writing a single sentence that's going to describe the likely outcome, so that you can visualize future impact, okay, so it's best to kind of create those two columns of the two decisions, and then write one sentence of, here's the option, and one sentence of here's the outcome, and impact. Because when we write options and outcomes, then we have an opportunity to really see it side by side, not like a pros and cons list really, but sort of, of like, this is my option, this would be the outcome, okay. But then similar to a pros and cons list, you get ready to step up onto the fourth rung of the ladder. Okay, you've already defined your options and outcomes, step three, move up to step four, and you're highlighting what's best. So you're gonna simply circle the best possible outcome. And highlighting the decision that corresponds to it, this is your number one choice. Because here's the thing, some of you may have had more than two options. At Step three, when you define your OPT options and your outcomes, you may have written down four or five sentences of what could have been possible, and what outcomes could have been associated with that. So then when you get up to that top rung, and you're looking at them spread out, and you know what the decision is what the outcome is, and you can see them all side by side, it's your brain and opportunity to really associate those outcomes with the decision that you need to make and pick the best out of those 12345 options. So you circle the best possible outcome, that's your number one choice, you put a number one next to it, the here's the thing, you have already written out those other options. And like I said, it's kind of like a pros cons list, except you're not necessarily doing the cons, you're looking at the outcome and the impact. So when you're looking across the board at all of your possible outcomes, you likely have a next best scenario, the next best thing that could happen if number one doesn't work, right, so you're gonna circle that and put a number two as the backup option. Right, because so often in leadership, we feel that pressure to make the big decision, or make the final decision in a medium sized decision process. But the reality is, we can be wrong, we can make mistakes in those decisions. And the important part for a leader is to be agile and flexible enough so that way, if they make that decision, and it doesn't work out, or if you make that decision and try at whatever you decided and fail. You've already thought through other possible options and outcomes and can come back to number two, and you have a quick fix, I was talking about being on a path and hitting mile markers along the way. And sometimes when you get off path or off trail on the way to that mile marker, it's not that you can't get to that next mile marker, it just might be a little bit of a different path, you might have to go off trail for a little bit. And it's no different with decision making like this, where you're seeing all of the possible options that you know, you can take. And you're trying to make the best decision in the moment. But we also have to be set up for potential failure, or something else going wrong around us. We just talked on a recent episode about VUCA environments and all that can happen. That's an external pressure that can happen to you. And so your job as leader is to be able to course correct in those moments. And so the decision ladder is not only helpful for making a quick decision in five minutes by moving up these rungs of the ladder. But it's also important for having backup plans. And having thought through everything cohesively as an opportunity for multiple options when things go awry. So we're headed into a busy season, the holiday season, the end of q4. And it can be full of decisions full of medium sized decision making moments that are a part of those 35,000 decisions you make a day, I want you to pick one to practice using this ladder rule with. So think about something that's tangible in your week that you need to actually call upon this ladder rule for and then the hope is that when you're framing out your decision using the ladder making process, you're minimizing how overwhelmed or stressed out you feel about the process because you're looking at options visually in front of you. You've written them down, you've created space, you've framed out the decision. And so you're making wiser decisions faster and climbing the ladder in a way that allows to lead more authentically and more confidently, this should help you minimize some of your decision making times down to five minutes. Which is crazy right to think that you can make a very educated decision in just five minutes. So be sure to link to the blog post with this episode so you can find the resources that we have in front of you. This is all written out, and it links back to the original article that was published in ink.com. by Jeff Steen, take a look at it and I hope that you will use the latter rule to make your next leadership decision