The Dad’s Against Not Keeping Score Society of Iowa Board of Directors met monthly.  Since the local chapter of the DANKS started, little progress had been made.  There had been a lot of meetings held but not a lot of decisions made.

The Chairman of the Board was Dan Slakovski.  He ran one of the largest bread companies in the state of Iowa.  It had been in the family for generations.

The Indecisive Leader is An OxyMORONic Leader

Things were on autopilot for Dan at work.  Dan wanted something else to do and DANKS was a cause Slakovski felt he could get behind.

Setting A Meeting Date

Unfortunately, the last meeting of the board ended without a decision on the date of the next meeting.  Dan sent an email out asking for availability from the six other board members.  He got six different dates back.

Dan decided he would choose the date that seemed to make the most sense to him.  Soon after he published the meeting date, he received 2 calls and an email from  3 members who could not attend the meeting.

He needed a quorum, so Dan got on the phone and spent an entire afternoon getting input on meeting dates.  By 5 o’clock, Dan had a date and location for the meeting.

Setting The Meeting Agenda

As the meeting approached Dan called the board members to get their input on the agenda.  Each time Slakovski spoke with someone, he changed the agenda.  Everyone seemed to have his own ideas about DANKS priorities in Iowa.

Frustrated, Dan called and vented to his wife.  She suggested calling DANKS National Chairman to get his thoughts.

Unfortunately the national chairman was in Eastern Europe on a youth sports fact-finding mission.  He was scheduled to return the day before Dan’s meeting.  Dan decided to wait until his return before finalizing the agenda.

Dan felt fortunate that he waited.  The national chairman shared that fund-raising goals for the next year would be significant.  He did not get into specifics, but Slakovski knew the board would be interested.

Finally!  The Meeting

The board members had been seated for an hour when Dan walked into the room.  Dan had sent an early version of the agenda to them and forgot to update them on the later start time.

Dan did not hand out an agenda.  He explained that due to the pending announcements on fund raising goals from the national committee, he felt it was best not to get locked into a specific fund raising strategy.

More than a little ticked off, Mike, a retired Marine Colonel exploded.  “Come on Slakovski! We have to do something.  We know we need to raise money.  Let’s put together a plan and start.  Once we have the goals, we can modify our strategy if we need to.”

“Look Mike.  I don’t feel comfortable moving forward until we know what our goals are.”

“Well we know WHY we are here!  We want these namby-pamby youth sports leagues to break down and buy a few friggin’ scoreboards.  We want our kids to grow up with a little competitive fire in their bellies!”

“Well Mike your not quite right.  We never did agree on a purpose statement.  I know we started that six meetings ago, but until we have absolute clarity on that, it is hard to say exactly what our purpose is.”

The exasperated the Marine listened for the rest of the meeting as more versions of DANKS Iowa Chapter Purpose Statement was debated.  Dan proposed a vote be set for the next meeting on the purpose statement.

The meeting adjourned 45 minutes late.  The next day Slakovski received the Marine’s resignation via email.  Within 60 days, two more board members resigned and the Iowa Chapter of DANKS folded.

The Bottom Line:

Somebody has to make decisions!  The person with that responsibility is the leader.  An Indecisive Leader is an OxyMORONic Leader.

Slakovski could not make a decision and the Board of Directors was paralyzed by his indecision.  A wise leader gets input from others.  Then a wise leader weighs the input, the situation that is in front of him, and makes the best decision he can with the information he has.

Slakovski’s decisions changed based on the last person he spoke to.  He called for advice from everyone and then called his superiors.  Yet, he still refused to make a decision.

He would not make a decision unless he had absolute clarity.  What he and many other Indecisive Leaders fail to realize is that absolute clarity is rarely attainable.  A leader must make decisions based on partial information, trusted input, experience and instinct.

Dan Slakovski was an OxyMORONic leader because he insisted on having 100% clarity on the situation and needed assurance that everyone was in agreement.  Those are two demands that are rarely met when a leader needs to make a decision.

As a leader I realized that I had to be comfortable without clarity and without consensus.  That is why I got paid the medium bucks!

Question:

When has waiting for perfect clarity kept you or your team from moving forward?