I often think I’m the only person in the world that finds it hard to make the difficult decisions in business.

I went to a presentation by Fred Hilmer, ex CEO of Fairfax Newspapers, last week.  He was an incredibly inspirational speaker.

What did it for me was the way that he spoke so emotionally about his ‘experiences’ during his 7 year tenure at the ailing newspaper.  Instead of the gruff CEO faces that you often see touting business tips and tricks he put good management decision making down to emotional awareness. His tips:

1) Rational decision making is very difficult as a CEO

You are constantly mis lead by time constraints, poor information, spin and EMOTION is hard to ignore.

2) There is a bias in a public company toward positive decision making

Negative decisions don’t make sense emotionally and if you can cope with that you will succeed.

3) Management text book rhetoric is very hard to apply

You have to balance all this things you know and what you have experienced to make the right decisions.

I’m reading his book now and will give you an update when I’m done.