Every day, we make decisions - about 35,000, in fact, for the average adult.
What to wear, what to eat, what to do on the weekend, whether or not to go to that thing your friend invited you to.
Yet, these pale in comparison to the decisions we make as leaders - what strategy to pursue, which team members to promote, which ones to let go, where to allocate resources. The challenges and the stakes are exponentially higher. In the fact-paced, high-pressure world of startups and scale-ups, leaders must navigate a seemingly endless series of decisions, which can sometimes feel overwhelming.
Should we focus on building this feature or cleaning up tech debt? Hire a PR firm or do our own PR? Launch a digital campaign to drive acquisitions or host an event? Hire this person or the other one?
Doesn’t it feel like you’re burdened by the weight of making decisions? Feeling like you have to know what to decide and it needs to be the right choice, otherwise things won’t go the way they should? You’re not alone. We all fall prey to that way of operating.
Making decisions comes with a sense of finality. It’s polarizing: one option chosen, the others killed off. It’s a heavy process, rife with the hidden stress of predicting outcomes and consequences. And with every decision made, the world seems to shrink a little.
But what if we could reframe this perspective? What if, instead of making decisions, we started making choices? Would that even matter? What impact would that have on our experiences and outcomes?
In many languages, the words ‘decision’ and ‘choice’ might seem interchangeable. But there lies a subtle, yet transformative difference between the two. As a matter of fact, the meaning of the word ‘decide’ in English comes from the Latin word, 'decidere', which means to cut off.
Whereas the word 'choice' comes from 14th century English ‘chois’. Old English 'ceosan', and Old French ‘choix’ roots which mean things like the "action of selecting,” “power of choosing,”, to "taste, try,” and to “distinguish, discern; recognize, perceive, see.”
Decisions “kill” or “cut off,” whereas choices bring “perception," power,” and “action.”
And so, yeah, decision-making does feel like a narrowing fork in the road. Choose one path, cut off the other. Subtract from your options. Be at the mercy of. Restrict life.
But choosing? That feels additive. Power to perceive and take action on endless possibilities. There is no fork in the road, just countless paths to taste, try, and experience.
So why should we stop making decisions and start making choices? And how do we do that?
There is no clear-cut, lone, solo path towards something. We live in a dynamic, complex, ever-changing, and interconnected web of elements. There are twists, turns, connections, and events - some expected and some unexpected that may impact us at any given moment. We are all a part of this web of life.
Let’s say you had a goal of becoming independently wealthy. And you feel like you need to either quit your job and work on building this wealth or stay employed to ensure steady income that will pay your bills. And so you feel like you’re at an impasse. You feel stuck, scared, concerned, and confused. You either do x and get y or do a and get b. In either scenario, there’s an illusory control of the outcome.
But what if instead of having to make a decision to get “y” you can make a choice to get you closer to “y”? What if you focus on your goal of becoming independently wealthy and ask yourself an empowering “and” question: What can I do to become independently wealthy and still have a steady income and benefits coming in to help me pay bills?
Whoa.
That’s a much lighter, less stressful, and more liberating way of thinking.
Because of this interconnectedness, we have choices to make in the things that will take us on a journey in a certain direction. That journey is full of outcomes that we can influence as well as events and elements that in turn, influence us. We can’t control the outcome. We don’t even know what will pop up along the way. At every moment, we always have choices to make that will impact our journey. There is no dead end, unless well, we’re actually dead.
Embracing this reality of interconnectedness empowers you as a leader too. Start by clarifying the outcome, goal, or result you’d like to get. Be open, and look at all possibilities as choices. And whatever you choose will beget new choices based on what happens along the way.
You don’t have to feel like you’re locked into something like deciding whether to enhance your current product offering or innovate new ones. You can reframe it as a choice, an opportunity to explore how to optimize both the current product and innovate simultaneously for example. Or choose one option, while you continue to collect data points and feedback on your path, viewing them as opportunities to pivot and explore new possibilities, continuously making choices and keeping the company innovative and customer centric.
When we make choices, we embrace the interconnectedness, empowering us to be open, see the endless possibilities of our choices, embrace uncertainty, and let go of the outcome as we journey towards it.
Our overall experience of life is therefore impacted by our approach. When we feel like we need to make a decision, it’s not fun! Who has ever felt like they enjoy making a decision? Even if it’s deciding what restaurant to go to for dinner - something as trivial as that can be exhausting and cause people to clash. But when you’re simply “choosing” where to go, it’s more enjoyable because you’re not cutting anything off. You’re just picking from a plethora of options which lead to a plethora of experiences.
The stakes feel very high when we approach situations as having “right” or “wrong” decisions. You feel like a victim, as if your back is against the wall. You’re closed off and oftentimes stuck. You can be paranoid and fearful.
But when you make a choice, the entire experience before, during, and after is more adventurous, light, and receptive. You’re aware that you don’t have full control. You get that things are interconnected. You choose. It may work, it may not work. That's ok. You understand where your power lies and where you have direct control, direct influence, and indirect influence.
So if you’re trying to figure out how to drive 50% more traffic to your site by the end of the quarter and you’re feeling overwhelmed because you feel like you need to decide whether you should publish more blog posts or launch paid social ads, pause, zoom out, and remind yourself of the interconnected web of life. You’re not cutting anything off, there is no one clear path, there is no right or wrong. We just have choices, experiences, and consequences that we can always manage and navigate with more choices to influence the outcomes we’re working towards.
That perspective alone will shift your experience before, during, and after you make your choice.
Believe it or not, the actual outcomes or results you get will vary greatly when you’re in the mindset of making a decision vs. making a choice. When you’re in the “either/or” thinking of making a decision, you’re faced with only a few options - that are many times mutually exclusive. You actually feel like you’re killing off a choice by deciding on the other. And it’s true! You do end up cutting yourself off from possibilities.
But when making choices, you’re able to think in additive terms. You’re inherently in an “and” or “growth” mindset. It’s an asset-based approach to the world, not a deficit-based one. You’re actively creating life, not at the affect of life. Where decisions immobilize us, pushing us towards limited options and an illusion of control, choices empower us to become cartographers, drawing out the web of possibilities, and navigators, journeying through these countless paths. The shift from decision-making to choice-making doesn’t just influence the direction we take and the experience of our journey, but the outcomes we actually create - which in turn influence our experiences and choices.
A marketing leader with a decision-making mindset, for example, who’s trying to increase brand visibility may ask, “Which marketing channel should we invest our resources in to give us maximum impact?” The question alone confines thinking, limits the potential reach, and makes them vulnerable to changes within that one channel they choose.
A choice-making mindset would ask something like, “How can we diversify our marketing strategy across multiple channels to increase our brand visibility?” or “We want to increase our brand visibility so that we’re featured in 2 major publications, drive 100% more traffic to our site, and get 30 mentions in the media. What are all the ways we could achieve that?”
The mindset alone impacts the type of question asked which in turn impacts the options that become visible.
It's like trying to make your way through a forest in the thick of night with the flashlight on your phone vs. a floodlight. Your phone flashlight enables you to see a limited path ahead - and you ask yourself, "Is this the right path? Should we take it?" - making your journey one that's based on a binary decision: go forth or retreat. Decisions.
But if you're using one of those construction floodlights - you're illuminating a much broader area, revealing so many paths - even potential obstacles along the way! Suddenly, you're not just asking, "Is this the right path?" You're also thinking, "Oh, what other ways can we go? And what would we do about that creek over there? Maybe we can stop for water. Oh, and there seems to be shelter over there. I wonder what we'll find along the way." This expansive view, makes more options visible and brings a sense of empowerment, freedom, and exploration to your journey. Choices.
Decision-making mindsets frame questions as a single path or option, limiting the potential for growth and flexibility.
Choice-making mindsets frame questions so that they highlight the possibility of exploring multiple avenues simultaneously. There’s an inherent recognition of the interconnectedness of the various elements and factors in achieving a goal.
At the heart of this reframe is the recognition that while we have limited control over our outcomes, we have limitless possibilities to choose from. Any choice we make will lead to some expected outcomes and many unexpected ones. So rather than inducing anxiety or guilt, this uncertainty invites acceptance. When we choose, we’re not merely selecting one of two or three options presented to us, but are instead opening ourselves up to a cascade of potential paths and opportunities.
Our journey of life, and especially in leadership, can often feel like a series of complex decisions, each one a new fork in the road that dictates the direction of our growth. But when we reframe these decisions as choices, we uncover paths of endless possibilities, paths where growth is truly unbound.
Transitioning our mindset from decision-making to choice-making isn’t merely a semantic shift - even though it starts that way. It is an empowering transformation that fuels personal and professional evolution. It breeds resilience, fosters a growth mindset, and infuses our journey with curiosity and excitement instead of stress and rigidity.
As leaders, our impact extends beyond our own paths. The choices we make echo throughout our teams, our organizations, and even resonate within our families and communities. By embracing and embodying the spirit of choice-making, we inspire others around us to do the same, to unbind their own growth.
So as we move forward, let’s see our options not as a limiting dichotomy but as a landscape filled with potential. We are choosers, pathfinders, cartographers and navigators of our journeys. It’s all about making choices that open up a universe of opportunities, where growth isn’t dictated by decisions that cut off possibilities, but by choices that add to them.
So let’s stop making decisions. And let’s start making choices.
Here’s to the future of “Growth Unbound”. A future where our paths aren’t confined by the fear of choosing wrongly, but rather illuminated by the courage of choosing freely.