Mailander Podcast
Dive deep into the minds of today's most influential leaders. From tech titans to political insiders, I uncover the secrets behind their success. What makes them tick? How do they make decisions? What drives them? Join me as we explore the strategies, mindsets, and frameworks that shape our world.
Mailander Podcast
Process Determines Outcome: Teachings from a U.S. House of Representatives Parliamentarian
Many CEOs believe their strategic success depends on the strength of their product, service, technology, financing, or branding. In reality, however, the most powerful asset available to the CEO in leading a company’s strategic execution is the process by which they make decisions. The process determines the outcome.
A former parliamentarian in the U.S. House of Representations, who would go on later to become a parliamentarian in the U.S. Senate, introduced Mailander to the subtle but profound power of understanding and influencing the path of decision arcs. These paths wind. They ebb and flow in response to pressures and vacuums, the jockeying of the players along the way, and to immutable forces of inertia and momentum. How they are crafted and managed, in the end, determines the outcome. More about the flow of the decision arc can be read in Mailander's article appearing in Big Think on July 13, 2023, entitled “How Curling — that Weird Winter Olympics Sport — Can Help You Make Better Decisions” (https://bigthink.com/smart-skills/curling-help-you-make-better-decisions/).
To make this a-ha practical for the CEO, identify the most critical imperative for your company over the over the next 12 to 24 months – e.g., buying a company through M&A; finding an exit for liquidity or sale; recapitalizing the business; reorganizing it; achieving greater market share; or sparking organic growth – and then work backwards from that end-point to chart the likely path of the decision arc that will achieve your momentous outcome.
Chris Mailander, author of Judgment: The Art of Momentous Decision-Making (Ironheart Publishing, available on Amazon), then describes an exercise CEOs can undertake to help reveal what elements must be true and when they must occur in order for you to achieve the critical objective. By doing so, a curated decision-making process can be crafted that heightens the probability of achieving the end-state objective.