From Shane Parrish’s Decision Making Course
The Most Important Thing
The Automatic Behavior: Identify and communicate the most important thing.
In this lesson, we’re going to teach you techniques for achieving perfect clarity on identifying what you want. This is so much more important than most people realize. When you can clearly identify what you want, when push comes-to-shove you can make decisions that meet your objectives.
When you’re crystal clear on your objectives, it becomes far easier to assess your options.
The right way forward presents itself because you now know the most important thing. Paths that are wrong for you become equally obvious.
We need to know which outcomes on projects are the most important and we need to know what we value the most in order to make good decisions. When you’re the leader and you set the most important value and you live by it, everyone feels clear and empowered to make decisions without you.
Why is this important in larger organizations?
The larger the organization the more important it is to have clarity around what matters and what doesn’t. Large organizations make thousands of decisions a day. The best way to get them aligned is for everyone from the janitor to the CEO-in-waiting to make them based on the same thing: the most important thing.
Imagine a boss who no matter what you do or submit, is unphased and displeased. He gives off the air that something could be better- but doesn’t communicate the specifics of what it is or how to get there. All he knows, or at least all he communicates, is he doesn’t like it.
No imagine a similar boss who no matter that you do or submit still finds criticism. But she also tells you what the gap is and what she wants to see in order to move closer to her vision. The feeling is completely different.
When someone is displeased but we don’t know why, we don’t know what to do next. We feel discouraged and overwhelmed.
When someone is displeased but knows exactly what you they want- and communicates it to us- we might still feel overwhelmed by the gap- but we feel empowered to take action. We know the most important thing for this project. We know the one thing that frames the problem.
If you don’t know where you want to go, all roads will take you there. So any decision can initially seem like the right one.
In practice, knowing the most important thing is often value based. If you’re a leader, it’s clarifying and empowering to have your team know what you value.
In a company, it might be that “serving the customer” is the most important thing. “Being profitable” becomes secondary. Therefore if someone has to choose between those two and you’re not around, they know how to choose.
When you know the most important thing with clarity, the metrics for what you’re delivering become crystal clear — and how you’ll be judged becomes clear. This is incredibly empowering.
But learning to become aware of – and name- what we do want is a skill. It takes some practice.
When we practice getting clear on our objectives and values, we not only set the trajectory for where we want to go, we give ourselves a way to measure progress throughout our decision-making process-so we know exactly when we’re off track.
It’s critically important to do this if you’re leading a group — so they can decide without you. If you’re directing a team of leaders, you want to be clear on the values they are to use in making decisions. If I tell you the most important thing is serving the customer — you know how to make decisions without me. If you make a bad judgment call, but it puts the customer first, I can’t fault you. You did what I wanted. If you don’t articulate the most important thing, people are left guessing about what matters. And because they’re guessing, they need you.
If you’re new to leading people this might feel good. You convince yourself that people can’t decide without you — when the reality is people can’t decide because of you. You’re the bottleneck and you’re not developing the judgment of others. When people know what the most important value is they know how to make decisions.
Not only is this an important aspect of leadership, but it’s an important aspect of leading your team. You have to pick on thing above all the others, and communicate it in a way that people can understand so they can make decisions. This is true leadership.
Exercise on how to find the most important thing:
I recommend getting sticky notes, or small individual pieces of paper. First, on each sticky note or individual piece of paper, write out one objective-or one thing that’s important to you- about the decision you’re making.
For example, before I decided to invest in Pixel Union — one of the largest web design agencies in the Shopify universe — I wrote down some objectives that were important to me.
They included:
- Be a win-win for employees, customers, and shareholders.
- Grow, rather than shrink, the business.
- Work with people I trust.
- Not having to manage people or add more to my plate.
- Not borrow money.
- Earn a decent return on investment. There are many more, but you get the idea.
Place only one objective on each piece of paper. Because next up we’re going to make your objectives battle.
Choose whichever objective you think is the most important to you and place it on a wall if it’s a sticky note — or a table. Then grab another objective. Compare the two and ask:
If I absolutely had to choose between only these two objectives, which matters more?
So to return to my example of investing in a company, it might be:
- Not having to manage people or add more to my plate.
- Earn a return on investment.
If I could only have one of these…
Earning a return on my investment, but having to manage people to do so, or…
Not having to manage people, but not making money as a result….
…which would it be?
I’d choose to earn money while also knowing that I’d have to manage people and move that objective higher — but knowing that I’d only be willing to do so within a certain threshold.
Which leads us to our next step: Adding quantities. This makes it real and forces you to quantify your thinking.
As your objectives battle one another, you too will find quantities matter. Add them to each objective as they battle.
As your objectives battle one another, you too will find quantities matter. Add them to each objective as they battle.
Let’s say that in my investment example, I started with not having to manage people. But as I rank my objectives, I find I’m willing to spend 5-10 additional hours per week managing people so long as the ROI is over $100k per year. If it’s over 10 hours per week, the ROI would have to be $200k. And If I’d have to manage people 20 hours per week, it would no longer be worth it to me — regardless of return.
When you start comparing things and thinking of how much you’ll pay for them, you gain a lot of clarity around what matters and what doesn’t.
Then move on to the next objective. In sequence from top to bottom, make your objectives battle one another for priority — adding the quantities that matter to you along the way.
Often, doing this exercise, people will look at a pair of objectives and think “I don’t necessarily have to choose between those two”-make them battle anyway.
May in real life you can meet both objectives. You can get a ROI while investing in a socially responsible company.
Or you can get in shape and still eat out on dates three times a week. Or you can buy a house in a great location that fits your budget.
But often, as we begin to pursue an option we find that we have to choose one objective over another- even if only slightly so.
Make them battle now to give yourself a clear path when the decision is at hand. Find the most important thing.
Setting these priorities for your objectives doesn’t just have to be related to the decisions you have at hand. You can do this for your values, your goals in life, your relationships.
It’s a quick way of creating your own compass for what’s important to you or your business.
Once you’ve done this, you’ll have identified the most important thing in each area of your life. You’ll have a north star to evaluate all of your options by.
How Can I Apply this Professionally?
- Sit down with your team and clarify the most important value they should use to make decisions when you’re not around.
- When kicking off a project let people know the most important thing—the one thing you have to get right—for the project to be a success.
- When in a meeting with colleagues ask the most important thing about the project. Really focusing on narrowing it down to one thing.
- When you’re unclear on the most important thing, take your time to figure it out. Use quantities to help you clarify.
How Can I Apply this Personally?
- Try a thought experiment with me. Imagine you’re 90 and sitting on a park bench looking back on your life. What do you remember as the highlights? What do you want people to say about you? Looking from this perspective gives you the ability to get out of the day-to-day and gain clarity over direction. What is your legacy work? What do you value? Did you live a life true to yourself or did someone else decide how you should live?
- Have a conversation with your spouse or partner about the most important thing that matters to you in your relationship. Whether you are doing great or in a rough patch, understanding what is most important to your partner is valuable information for dealing with future conflict or change.
- If you are a parent, it’s easy to get caught up in the day to day business of raising kids. Defining for yourself the most important thing in terms of your relationship with your kids will help you let go of all the small challenges. Ask yourself, does it really matter if they put their pants and t-shirts on separate shelves in their closet? Is the most important thing an organized closet or them visiting you in the nursing home when you’re 85?
You’re ready to move on to the next lesson when the following are complete:
- I’ve listed down all of the objectives relevant to my decision.
- I’ve gotten specific about the quantities related to my objectives.
- I’ve ranked my objectives in order.
- I’ve identified the most important thing.