Making Strategic Business Decisions vs. Emotional Mom Decisions

It’s Your Choice

I’m excited to share a post by Autumn Leopold, a Professional Organizer specializing in residential relocation organizing and family organization for Windfall Organizing in northern Colorado. Autumn offers social media and blog strategy consulting and training programs for professional organizers and small business entrepreneurs. She is the creator of the organizing and entrepreneur blog, http://smarthappyorganized.com. Autumn is a member of the NAPO Membership Committee for NAPO National and a member of NAPO-CO

To learn more about Smart Happy Organized, visit the website and connect on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and Google+!

Thanks so much, Autumn for sharing your insights with us! Read on to learn and become inspired!

I was recently really excited to watch the latest season of the Biggest Loser.

I haven’t watched it in a while but I enjoy it because it’s motivating and I love rooting these people on. On a recent episode, there was some drama in the house and Bob Harper had a great response for his team. Bob stresses that when you are making a strategic decision it’s important to base it on business principles vs. emotional ones. A contestant had made a really bad decision based on revenge and fear versus making a strategic business decision that may have won her the contest.

This spoke to me as a mom on so many levels because of the emotion-based decision making we do to take care of our families every day. I really wanted to dig deeper in and make sure I was making the best strategic decisions for my business while not letting my “mom” emotions (you know the taking care of everyone else, feeling bad for charging too much, not wanting to hurt people’s feelings, etc.) get the best of me.

[Tweet “Are you guilty of emotion-based decision making in your #business? #mompreneur “]

What are some guiding business principles for strategic decision making…for moms?

Strategic Decision Making

Strategic decision making, or strategic planning, is the process of creating your company’s mission and objectives and deciding on the courses of action your company should pursue to achieve those goals.

• List Strengths and Weaknesses

Create a list of personal strengths (good at saying no) and weaknesses (bad at following my budget) when it comes to decision making. This can help you create strategies to exploit strengths or minimize weaknesses to take advantage of the opportunity and avoid pitfalls. From this list, you can also create a list of decision-making rules or guidelines you must follow.

Example: Delegate decision making you know it’s too emotional for you or at least have an accountability partner.

• Cost-Benefit Analysis

A cost-benefit analysis is a strategic decision-making tool that can help you choose between two or more different courses of action. This can be used for financial decisions as well as situation outcome decisions. Create a list of the costs and benefits of a certain strategy. Note when each cost has an emotional aspect you should be on alert for and or which benefit has an emotional aspect you should be aware of. Being aware of these helps you use them to your advantage during decision making or helps you keep them out of the mix.

Example: Parents who coach their kids on a team face this situation.

• Be Flexible

Moms are amazing problem solvers which is one of our greatest strengths as entrepreneurs. We can analyze problems in broad terms which allows for more flexibility in decision making. We receive and interpret information quickly, draw our conclusions, consider the implications, and solve the problem. We are also good at laying things out in a step-by-step if need be. This all comes from teaching our children (and hubby’s) and managing our households.

Example: The contestant on a show was not flexible on her path for revenge. She was even told it was harming her and her team but she wouldn’t deviate. Being flexible means being receptive to change.

Is it bad to use “some “ emotions when making decisions?

I’ve found that sometimes my emotions about a decision are useful in directing my attention and energy toward what I feel are the most important aspects of the decision. However, if I am intensely emotional I tend to make hasty, misguided decisions based on the moment.

Examples: buying more car than you can afford, buying more house than you can afford, hiring a friend instead of the most qualified for the job.

My husband has been an asset and an accountability partner for me and he is a firm believer in sleeping on it.

I hope you will consider taking time to create your own personal list of strategic decision-making rules for your business and that they guide and help you keep your mom emotions out of your future business decisions.

Please share your thoughts and comments

Are you guilty of emotion-based decision making in your business? Which of these tips will you try? Let us know in the comments below!

********

Thank you so much Autumn! As Mompreneurs, making the best strategic decisions is the key to success!

To contact Autumn directly, you may find her at http://smarthappyorganized.com