Floating or Paddling?

When my wife, Christine, got her PhD, she found a role at a Wheaton College, about two hours away.

She got the offer. (No small feat! There are not many jobs for cultural anthropologists.)

At the time, our kids were at home and in school. I had a role that did not lend itself to remote work. And we loved our home in Madison, Wisconsin. Taking the role would mean she would have to commute to a different city, staying two or three or maybe even four nights every week during the school year.

We decided to go for it. 

That was 11 years ago.

And in making that one decision, thousands of other decisions were made. 

Who’s packing lunches on Tuesday morning? Me.

Who’s picking the kids up after a practice on Wednesday afternoon? Not Mom.

Who’s figuring out an elaborate chemistry model on a Thursday? Me again. (Well, hopefully the kids. Gotta grow up and learn some responsibility sometime.)

By deciding to take Chrissy’s role at Wheaton, we simplified and ordered all manner of choices for years and years. 

The same thing happens for organizations. But it often works in reverse. 

Myal Greene, President and CEO of World Relief, explains this dynamic on this week’s episode of The Nonprofit CEO Podcast.

"I don't think I fully grasped while we were going through that decision-making process, the level of follow-on change that would come to bear…It was a very consequential decision to make adjusting mission and vision, because then it affects how we do our strategy, it affects how we do hiring, it affects how we do capital allocation, all of that down the road." 

For our family, we made one decision, and it automatically made many other decisions. Doors closed.

For Myal and World Relief, they made one decision, and it suddenly called for many other decisions. Doors opened. And each one needed him to decide something else.

In my conversations with 250+ CEOs, I find that some expect to make a big decision and then to just float downstream from there. They think the hard part is deciding.