Making decisions is a hard thing to do. Often, we start with what we want to do without examining why first. In today’s video, I dig into a decision-making process that will get you better results. Let me know what you think in the comments below.
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Transcript:
Hi, today we’re going to talk about what I call the Stage 3 Decision Process. Now, what this is, is a simple system and is designed to help you make fast decisions that are more accurate about what will actually add value to your business and your life.
Hi, I’m Josh Patrick. I’m the founder here at Ask josh Patrick. Today, we’re going to talk about decisions. Decisions are the things that you can do that adds hundreds of thousands of dollars of value to your business, if you make the right one.
What is the Stage 3 System?
Now, wouldn’t it make sense to have a system that allows you to walk through your decision-making process that will give you a chance of having higher quality decisions on a regular basis? So the Stage Three Decision Process is just that particular thing. It has five pieces to it. We start with “what”. We dig down on “why”. We go back and revisit “what”. And then we figure out who do we need to help us to get the outcome we want to get and then how are we going to actually do that.
Where why fits in.
So let’s talk about how this might work in practice. You know, I had a wealth management client once, so she had a $100 million in assets under management and she said it was really important for me to double that. So I said, “Okay.” And she said, “By the way, I’m thinking about buying this business.” So, the “what” became was “Buy this business to add a $100 million dollars in assets.” That was her first “what”.
So then we dug down on “why” and she started to say, “Well, it’ll make my business bigger. It’ll make my business better.” And we went down and we asked “why” five times to get down to what I call the root cause of why she wanted to buy this business. And the root cause happened to be “It’s going to make me more competitive in the marketplace.”
Re-looking at what and changing direction.
Now, if you know anything about acquisitions, you know that most of them fail and they’re very difficult to do. So, her “what” was to buy a new business but the real “what” that she had was to add a $100 million in business. So, we got a chance to go back and say, ”Okay, we want to be more competitive. We want to have more sales. Is buying the business the best way to go about doing that?” Now, asking that in a manner that we asked it came up with a completely different answer. And the answer was, “No, we really don’t want to buy a new business. We just want to add a $100 million in assets.” Now, we came to the conclusion that it would be better for us to have a marketing program where we go out and we talk about how we can market and have a sale system in place to add the $100 million in assets – much safer, much easier and much better to do that. So then, we went and said, “Okay, who is going to help us? And how are we going to get there?” Those are just technical answers but without a good “why” and a good “what” you’ll never really get to those technical answers and have a good answer for what you want to do.
The process.
So, it really comes down to “how do you make decisions that are going to support you in the best way possible?” So let’s recap on how we do that. We start with “what”. We then go to “why”. Now, this is really important. You can ask “why”. You can ask “why” twice. You can ask “why” three times. You need to drill down five levels deep. You need to peel the onion back. If you do that, you’re going to find that your decision-making is much better. Now, after we have a clear “why”, we can go back and look at the “what” and see if that’s the most elegant way to get the outcome we want.
Here’s my bet, most of the time – and I mean most of the time, that first “what” that you started off with is not the right thing for you to be doing. You’re going to come up with a much better thing to do after you understand the “why” behind that. Then, after you go back and you get that final “what”, you have to say “Who is going to help me?” Because frankly, the “Who is going to help me?” is really more important than the “how” because the people who are going to help you are the people who are going to determine how we’re going to get there.
So that’s our system. It’s pretty simple. I hope you like it. I hope you use it and I’m happy to have a conversation about that.
Oh, by the way, if you click on the button below, you’re going to get a chance to get our ebook on Relationships and Roles. One of the things that I think is really important for a business owner to do, if they’re going to create a sustainable business, is to play the right role in their business. If you do this, you’ll avoid burnout, you’ll have a lot more fun and your business won’t be a challenge. It’ll be something that you really enjoy going to everyday.
Again, I’m Josh Patrick. You’re at Ask josh Patrick. Thanks a lot for stopping by. I hope to see you back here really soon.
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