decisions

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Life is good here

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c/o Getty Images

c/o Getty Images

There is an unstoppable movement towards greater consciousness about what our actions are doing in the world around us. And the younger generations are continuously searching for higher meaning and more sustainable behaviours. I think working together in flat, loosely connected networks, in a peer-to-peer fashion, is behind the most significant changes in human society over past 100 years.

Do you work in an organisation where decision making was clearly expressed and democratically distributed? I wonder what it would be like to work in an organisation where communicating your dreams and ambitions is encouraged. Where the decision making is led by a leader who collaborative and is interested in having feedback from outside of the C suite. Once the decisions have been agreed, no one in the group will have any remains objections and consent to implementation.

What does it cost us to make a decision that no one believes in or is willing to commit to? Are you trying to do too much with everyone involved? Contact me via e-mail for a meeting where we could take a deeper dive into your situation.

Little decisions become big decisions

We are constantly looking into the past, projecting into the future and creating alternative realities. Reality is as it is, you either argue with it or you can embrace it! When I was young, my ambition was to be one of the people who made a difference in this world. My hope is still to leave the world a little bit better for my having been here, as I have a wonderful life and I love it.

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“Your input determines your outlook,
Your outlook determines your output, and
Your output determines your future. ”
— Burrellism

Outcome vs. Ego

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As a father it has always been important to me to emphasise to my children that I don’t care if they win or lose, all I insisted on was that they do their best. This sounds really “woke” but I think that there is a huge distinction between decisions and outcomes. Pause and take a moment to silently think about any decision that you have taken over the past few months.
Q. Did that decision have a good outcome?
A. My guess is yes! As everyone always picks one that has a good outcome, because that’s how we decide that it’s a good outcome.


I believe that if you made a good decision and it didn’t work out, then it’s still a good decision. On the other hand, if you made a bad decision and got lucky, you haven’t learned anything about good decision making. And yet we criticise people based on the outcome as opposed to criticising them based on what’s in their control, and that’s the decision. The practice is about focussing on the decisions because the outcomes are out of our control. The practice is about what’s in our control and not what the outcomes are.
When this happened what are you going to do about it, is completely different than this happened and screaming oh no, over and over again. I think that things that happen, happen, but they are out of our control except for our response towards them.


Food for thought - Do you value truth over objective reality? Are you willing to be effective or would you prefer to be right? I think if you want to be effective you will be open to feedback that teaches you how the world really works. If you need to be right, then you will isolate yourself from that and in your heart of hearts, you know you’ll never be effective.

It really matters how we frame things

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The circumstances of our lives may matter less to our sense of wellbeing than the sense of control we feel over our lives. It has always baffled me why in western societies we are never given the opportunity to solve problems psychologically. I think that it is because there is an imbalance in the way we treat creative, emotionally driven psychological ideas versus the way we treat rational, numerical, spreadsheet driven ideas.


If you are a creative person, you are forced to share your ideas for approval with people who are far more rational than you. You have to have a budget, cost-benefit analysis, ROI study, etc. This is probably correct and sensible - why does this never apply the other way around? Perhaps, it’s because people who have an existing framework, whether it be economical or engineering, feel as though logic is its own answer. Traditionally, we prioritise mechanistic ideas over psychological ideas.


I think when we solve problems we should look equally at technology, psychology and economics, and if possible, we should base our decisions on the conclusions that sit in the "sweet spot” somewhere in the middle.