Patience is a Vice and Virtue in Business

iStock_000017171991XSmallPatience is virtuous when it empowers you to use good judgement. Patience is a vice when it is used as an excuse or method of procrastination.

Patience has a role in every aspect of business. Patience can be a virtue when leaders need time to evaluate and research the benefits and risks associated with critical business decisions. Patience can also be a vice when it hinders progress or is used by leaders to stall or delay difficult decisions.

In business, leaders gain respect when patience is used as a sensible guide. It can help define practical goals and set realistic expectations on performance. Patience is valuable in strategic planning, negotiations and critical thinking exercises that have significant impact on the future of a business. Patience also defines a business reality and sets a tone of perseverance.

Leaders can immediately lose respect if they show little or no patience. Rushing to judgement can sabotage activities or blur facts. Charging forward on key decisions regardless of the cost or potential dangers, can result in missed opportunities and less-than desirable outcomes.  Leaders that employ too much patience may be deemed as lacking confidence in their own decisions or lacking confidence in others.  It can spark insecurities and even instability in the business. No patience creates a perception of erratic and unstable leadership.

Patience needs balance. When patience is part of the decision-making process, be certain that there is substantiated purpose. For example, use patience in planning when you need to acquire experience, research facts, test an outcome or survey others for input. Patience used to delay a decision because of a lack of experience or knowledge can create a false roadblock. Set a timeline. Using patience to gather feedback is a good use of the virtue.  Patience becomes a vice when it drives you to continually seek consensus on all decisions.

Patience as a virtue gives you capacity to endure waiting. Patience as a vice is not setting a deadline, allowing difficult decisions or unexpected outcomes to linger and potentially harm the business. Patience, used correctly, is part of your business ethics. It helps in governance.

Patience gives you the fortitude to make decisions. The right amount of patience enables leaders to use levelheadedness and detach from emotions in the decision and use logic and facts. Patience is a vice when it is used so frequently that it creates an emotional detachment to any decisions or prevents you from personally engaging or taking responsibility for your decisions and commitments.

Patience in business needs to be modulated. It is a guide, a compass. It is never absolute. There are times you have to make immediate decisions. There are many times you need to trust your gut, your instincts, you inner voice and just go. True leaders have the courage to accept associated risk with making a immediate decisions, as well as knowing when it is important to deploy patience at the right time to get the best results.

“Patience is bitter, but its fruit is sweet.” ― Aristotle

Jamie Glass, President and CMO at Artful Thinkers @jglass8

Leaders are Superior Deciders

Business leaders and entrepreneurs are faced with endless decisions. The effect of every decision can impact the forward motion of the organization, address critical business needs or simply keep operations steadfast.  Decisions are part of the bosses daily to do list.  How decisions are made reflects your effectiveness and judgement.

As a leader, you have the role as crowning decider. Confidence in your ability to make decisions impacts how others recognize you inside and outside your organization. Employees, partners, customers, vendors, investors and your market industry all evaluate your strength as a leader based on your decision making skills.

Being resolute and determined assures others you are unmistakably in the right position to guide the company. Responsibility and accountability rest on your shoulders, always.  Whether you delegate the actual decision making process to someone in your business or not, you own the outcome.

How leaders make decisions sets the pace of how the business operates and often to what degree it succeeds.

  • Fast Decision Makers:  High growth, innovative businesses require a leader adept to making rapid decisions, trusting intuition and using a high threshold for exposure to risk.  Failure is an option for this type of decision maker, as the decider is likely a pro at pivoting.
  • Moderate Decision Makers: Leaders that use managed growth strategies require a steady hand. They are assessors and consumers of strategic evaluations and advice to help mitigate risk.  Roadmaps, KPIs and measured milestones often guide this type of leader in their timing of decisions.
  • Slow Decision Makers:  Risk adverse companies who have a very low tolerance for failure, perhaps because of the financial structure, need a decider who will go beyond assessment.  They use defined research, analytic and data resources, detailed reports and experts to evaluate their decisions.  These type of deciders are patient and often are primarily focused on long-term goals and objectives.

Of all types of deciders, the biggest failure of any business leader is NOT making a decision.  CEOs and business owners are often surrounded by advisors and have multiple inputs into their decision making processes.  It can complicate the final call.  Talk is not cheap. Too many inputs can slow down decisions and increase risk.

Businesses fail in absence of making decisions.  New technologies can sweep them out of the market.  Hindered by bad personnel, companies can be drained of momentum and energy.  Capital issues can delay key projects and impact future revenue.  Making a decision, can negate these types of risks.

Empowering others to make decisions is important in any business.  Provide others the capability of being creative and strategic in their role by decision making authority.  You want thinkers and doers in your business.  If they are only allowed to do, based on your decisions, you can stifle cooperation and confidence.

You may need to set limitations on decision making capabilities by your empowered team based on the business risk tolerance.  Budgeting is one way to put in business controls, along with road maps.  Define what has the most critical impact on the business and put in place the sign-off authority for those decisions.  For example, if a product development change can delay meeting a critical release date of a product or service, put in place authorizations to manage expectations with all stakeholders.

Whether a decision relates to products, markets, finances, technologies or personnel, a business can easily become paralyzed without a strong leader that makes decisions.  The final decision is the responsibility of the leader. Inputs need to be managed.  Assign a deadline and know when a final decision must be made, without exception.

As the decider, you have the ultimate power.  How you use your power is a reflection of your leadership.  Whether you choose to make rapid decisions or methodical, deliberate decisions, the action matters most.  Don’t let decisions, small or large, slow you or your business down.  Procrastination is deadly.  Lead by deciding.  Decide how you will lead. Decide now.

By Jamie Glass, CMO & President of Artful Thinkers and Managing Director of Sales & Marketing Practice at CKS Advisors.