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What Martin Luther King Can Teach Us About Decision-Making

It’s Martin Luther King Day in the US today. It’s accurate to say I know less about Dr Martin Luther King Jr than I should (and being a white Australian-Canadian only partially excuses that). Chris Guillebeau and others have been educating me on the impact of the man beyond his “I have a dream” speech that is so well known.

One thing is clear: he had a way of figuring out what really matters – and then having the courage to make the hard decision.

Here’s part of what Dr King says, should you turn away from that moment of decision:

And the cessation of breathing in your life is but the belated announcement of an earlier death of the spirit.

You died when you refused to stand up for right.

You died when you refused to stand up for truth.

You died when you refused to stand up for justice.

I think you can see the link between this and what’s at the heart of Great Work for you. Three things are essential

Finding the courage to commit

Commitment = being willing to make the tough decision and to act upon it.

That’s easy to write, but it’s difficult to do. We’ve all bumped into our share of leaders who’ve procrastinated about making the decision, or have misplaced their backbone or their heart.

And I can hold my hand up to say that I’ve done all that too. (You too, right?)

Once again, that gap between theory and practice. So what’s stopping us making the good decision? Sydney Finkelstein, the author of Think Again: Why Good Leaders Make Bad Decisions and How to Keep it From Happening to You, points to four fundamental dynamics that underlie bad decisions.

Before we get to them, do this as a favour to me. Bring a tough decision you’re currently wrestling with to mind. A challenge you’ve been chewing over or procrastinating on or lying to yourself about. Got one? Good…

1. Inappropriate attachments

When you can’t let go of a belief, a position or a thing.

Thinking about your challenge, step outside yourself for a moment and view yourself with a critical eye. What might you be holding on to that’s distorting the way you see the challenge?

I find that for me, one of my key “attachments” is the belief that I’ll make the best decision on this. That just makes me the bottleneck time and time again.

2. Inappropriate self-interest

I’m putting me before anyone else.

Thinking about your challenge, again step outside yourself for a moment and view yourself with a critical eye. What do you want out of this? What’s the less honourable thing you want from it?

I notice that I often put “maintaining the facade of being a lovely, benevolent person” in front of making the decision.

3. Misleading pre-judgements

Mistaking your beliefs for The Truth.

Thinking about your challenge, write down what you know to be true. Consider the standard to be “admissible as evidence in a court of law.” Keep asking yourself, “What’s the evidence for this?” If there’s evidence, that it’s evidence for a judgment. If the statement itself is the evidence, then you’ve isolated a fact

I’m always embarrassed and amazed to find out that the ratio of fact: judgment is about 1:100.

4. Misleading experiences

“Past performance is no promise of future performance…”

Your brain loves to find patterns. If you were to make this tough decision, what are you assuming will happen next? Can you find the historical precedence that influences that?

I notice that I’m constantly tripped up by my past experiences of how a boss behaves. I’m so desperate to avoid doing that, that I don’t make the tough decisions – even though there’s no reason why I’m going to end up like some of my bosses…

Don’t keep it a dream

Of course we know Dr King’s “I have a dream” speech.

But when it comes to decision-making, Dr King was about action not dreaming.

Whatever the tough decision is that you’ve been wresting with, move to action with it today.


If you enjoyed this post, you'll also like:

  1. Michael Mauboussin, Decision Making
  2. Making hard decisions
  3. Roger Martin, The Design of Business
  4. Alexandra Levit, They Don’t Teach Corporate in College
Posted on January 16, 2012
Posted in productivity, self-management

One Response to What Martin Luther King Can Teach Us About Decision-Making

  1. Nancy Shah says:
    January 16, 2012 at 11:00 am

    Re: MLK and decison-making…when you make the right decision in business, the tough/courageous ones, it feels so good when the decison aligns with your “truth” or center or compass. It is defensible and undeniable, and may anything else just crash and burn! At the end of the day, you feel “right” with youreslf.