We know that a CEO’s most important job is to make decisions.
But which ones?
Well, the ones only she can make, but that’s a Yoda-like response that defies an easy checklist.
Mostly, they are Kevin Kelly Stage 6 decisions, which excludes the very comfortable Stage 5 (‘Doing things well and with love’) and instead is exclusively the decisions that the CEO is uniquely qualified to make.
A major component of that quadrant is unpopular decisions.
Consider this: all decisions will either be right or wrong, and will either be made by the CEO or by everyone else (yes, the mental model is that ‘consensus’ doesn’t really exist…for everything tough, you need a single decision-maker).
The question is: how many of the decisions in the top-right corner are unpopular at the moment they are made? A bunch.
Why?
The job description of any good CEO includes a sentence like: “by virtue of your experience / insights / relationships / smarts / information access / etc., you bring a unique perspective to a set of strategic issues that we will face. It is your job to employ that unique perspective to drive the organization to the best possible outcomes.”
The key bit here is the “unique perspective.”
If the CEO possesses that, then, in some situations, she sees / knows things that no one else does, and because of that she will want to zag when others zig.
These are the important, unpopular decisions.
Important because of the unique perspective.
And unpopular because others don’t share that unique perspective.
That means if you’re a CEO who—because you prioritize strong, good, respectful, low-conflict relationships with your team—never makes unpopular decisions, you’re not doing your full job. The more collaborative you are as a leader, the more often you’re going to shy away from these decisions. And that’s the trap.
(Conversely, if you have a big ego and get a kick out of using your power, then this post is not for you. Folks with this profile will drastically overestimate how often they have ‘unique’ perspective and will conflate ‘only I can see this’ / ‘this is unpopular’ and ‘and I’m right.’ These folks are in the bottom right corner of the graph a lot of the time).
It takes courage to make heartfelt, honest, unpopular decisions. These decisions have a short term cost, they require going out on a limb, and they should be made with humility.
But they have to be made, and made quickly.
The quality of all decision-making systems is judged by speed, effort, quality, and yield.
So even (especially!) your unpopular decisions need to happen quickly, with as little effort as possible, all while resulting in high-quality, high-yield outcomes.
Easy peasy.
