Today's guest post is courtesy of Jack Quarles, author of Expensive Sentences.
Enjoy the post, then get a copy of the book and learn what our choice of words can cost.
Seven Bad Reasons for a Decision and One Good One
Have you heard of the Anna Karenina principle?
Leo Tolstoy famously started his novel Anna Karenina by writing: “All happy families are alike, but every
unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”
Strong opener, huh? The sentence has been adopted to describe
situations where success depended on multiple factors, all of which had to go
right.
Let me twist that into the Expensive Sentences version: there
are lots of BAD reasons that drive decisions on your team, but there’s only one
good one.
Seven BAD Reasons for a Decision
Let’s identify the most common reasons that derail decisions, and
illustrate each with a sentence:
1. Inertia
“We had an executive retreat last year, so we should have one
this year.”
2. Groupthink
“They have a social media consultant, I guess we need one too.”
3. Politics
“The EVP will be really unhappy if we challenge this research
project.”
4. Guilt
“This vendor has given us a lot of free testing, we ought to buy
something from them.”
5. Fear
“Let’s buy now before the price goes up, and while they have
plenty of stock!”
6. History
“We have already spent $3M on this project, to stop now would be
admitting failure.”
7. Cronyism
“Ed’s a good friend, so let’s renew his contract and keep him
around.”
Any of these sentences may be worth discussing and may even play
a role in the decision. But none should be the main REASON.
Take another quick scan of the list. As you consider your past decisions,
have any been driven by one of the unhappy seven? Which two or three are most
likely to sway your team?
Could those bad reasons be influencing your upcoming decisions?
If so, you can cut through with the one happy, valid reason.
The One Good Reason for a Team Decision
All happy company actions are alike in this way: they move your
organization closer to your goals.
That’s it.
Most team decisions are purchases of some sort: they involve a
commitment of team resources (time or money) for an outcome (a product, or a
desired result). There must be a clear purpose to the purchase. If you can’t
make a direct connection between the purchase and the goal, then any price you
pay is too much.
Does this strike you as too simple? If it does, then your
organization may be exceptionally good at identifying and writing down the
objectives and goals associated with projects and purchases. Most companies are
not good at this, so they periodically have to ask themselves: “Now why again
did we buy this? Why did we do this?”
The Purpose of the Purchase
To validate a strong connection between the purchase and the
purpose, here are a few examples following a simple formula:
Formula: The purpose of [the purchase] would be to [the purpose]
so that [the benefit – in cost or revenue].
Example 1: The purpose of an executive retreat would be to
confirm our strategy and make sure everyone is on the same page so that we
don’t spend money pursuing the wrong initiatives. This gets us closer to our
goal of reducing costs.
Example 2: The purpose of a social media consultant would be to
direct our online efforts so that our content marketing reaches the widest
audience. This gets us closer to our goal of bringing in new customers.
If you’re looking for drama, I recommend Anna Karenina or any of
the bad buying reasons above.
For clarity and economy, take some extra time to document the
purpose of the purchase.
******
Jack Quarles is a speaker, trainer, consultant,
and author of Amazon #1 bestsellers How Smart Companies Save
Money and Same Side Selling, as well as the upcoming Expensive
Sentences. He has saved companies tens of millions of
dollars over two decades in the field of expense management. Jack has
co-founded several companies, serves on two non-profit boards, and received
degrees from Yale and Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Business. Connect with
Jack on LinkedIn or Twitter (@JackQuarlesJQ).
