Husein Sharaf leads Cloudforce, an award-winning D.C.-area consultancy focused on deploying, managing and securing cloud infrastructure.
“Unlock The Hidden Power: The ONE Move To Elevate Your Business Game”
“Unleash Your Success Potential: The Critical Decision You’re Overlooking”
“Navigating Startup Success: The Simple Step To Boost Profits Now”
We’ve all scrolled through our social feeds and caught sight of tantalizing headlines similar to these that promise to unveil the ultimate secret to revolutionizing our business. As an entrepreneur, I, too, have fallen under the spell of these captivating clickbait titles, each one tapping into our insatiable hunger for that one game-changing insight we might have missed.
Don’t get me wrong—not all of the wisdom I’ve absorbed from such titles has been completely off the mark. However, the majority of the content that follows these flashy headers tends to regurgitate oversimplified and well-worn concepts that have done the rounds a hundred times over.
Over the course of more than a decade, my journey in establishing a thriving tech company has led me down countless avenues. I’ve devoured an entire library’s worth of books and plunged into a sea of blogs, podcasts and videos dedicated to the art of entrepreneurship. Yet, when I take a step back to truly evaluate the elements that contributed to our ability to not just compete but thrive in a fiercely saturated market, boiling it down to a solitary decision or even a handful of decisions becomes an arduous task.
While there are overarching strategic moves that have certainly set us apart, such as our unwavering focus on a niche array of services and our dogmatic commitment to prioritizing culture over profits, these have functioned more as “macro-level” guiding principals than instant panaceas.
I’m frequently asked what the single pivotal choice is that I attribute to my company’s resounding success. The revelation that dawned on me with time is that it’s not one single choice but an intricate web of countless “micro-decisions” that have paved our path. I recall reading once that the true job of a CEO of any significant enterprise is essentially to serve as a decision-making machine that’s consistently churning through data, drawing from intuition and delivering swift directives to their team—all day, every day.
Initially, I was skeptical of this notion when our crew was compact and deeply connected. However, as we grew beyond the point of maintaining that hyper-connection and as my role shifted further and further away from hands-on involvement in delivery functions, this truth became undeniable.
Surveying my daily routine and its impact on our overall performance, I can pinpoint a mosaic of 15 to 25 micro-decisions that require my attention, each one capable of steering the work of dozens (if not more). On their own, these decisions might seem inconsequential, but they’re intricately interwoven with every other business move, setting off a chain reaction with repercussions that may only manifest months or years down the line.
What does this mean for the next groundbreaking business trend? Let’s be real—it’s always beneficial to add more tools to your decision-making arsenal as a leader. However, it’s the culmination of hundreds (even thousands) of these tools, coupled with years of experience and finely honed intuition, that truly transform us into adept decision architects. There’s no solitary instrument, no quick-fix approach, no magic formula that empowers a leader to hit the bull’s-eye time after time.
Here’s the kicker—my “aha” moment of self-reflection on my daily routine also revealed that these micro-decisions extend well beyond what’s directly business-related and into the personal sphere. As leaders, we typically have very little (if any) hierarchical accountability for our personal choices in the business setting. There’s no one to tell us what time to wake up, how many hours to work on a particular day or how much attention to put toward mental and physical health.
A positive trend in American work-life culture over the last decade is undoubtedly the general acceptance that all of these factors are important and impactful in the workplace. Therefore, every small, seemingly insignificant personal decision we make before, during and after our workday can have significant consequences on our overall business performance.
Counterintuitively, the once-in-a-lifetime scenario I found myself in during the pandemic lockdowns actually had a dramatically positive effect on my personal choices in these areas. I consciously decided to wake up much earlier every morning, exercise before the start of every workday, eat healthier and more consistently and stop chasing a “work-life balance”—instead opting to adjust my working hours each week based on what the business was demanding at that moment and being more intentional about taking time off when things slowed down.
I consider all of these “micro-decisions” as well, and we each make at least a half-dozen or more of them every day, significantly contributing (or detracting from) our business performance when compounded over time.
In the grand symphony of an entrepreneur’s journey, it’s imperative to experiment with various decision-making techniques and approaches. Test their effectiveness, fine-tune them and tuck them away in your mental toolkit for future reference. There’s no individual decision that, in isolation, will guarantee success in any venture. Instead, it’s the compendium of innumerable micro-decisions, the subtle shifts in course, the nimble adaptability to market conditions, customer behavior, staffing realities and the ever-changing landscape of variables that truly define the fate of a venture.
It might not be the spoonful of sugar that every eager young entrepreneur craves, but rest assured, with time and the acquisition of each new skill, you’re well on your way to becoming a maestro of decisions orchestrating your path to victory. A true “micro-decision machine.”
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