Wolves and Decisions

This is a story about wolves. Wolves and decisions.

Making decisions is difficult for some people but comes easier for others. I have witnessed this first hand with people close to me and with those who reported to me over the years.

Someone once asked me how I made such quick decisions? I answered, “Experience is one important key. If you put your hand in fire and you get burned, you learn not to make that same mistake again. But the second one is more important, it is being true to yourself. I have to match my outward decisions and actions with my internal values?”

The person seemed perplexed but came back to me the next day and said, “I get it now”. It’s easier to make a decision when you base it on something”. I smiled. He did in fact get it.

I read a story recently on the internet. It was about a Native American elder who was teaching his grandson a lesson. He said it was about two wolves who live in everyone’s heart. The first wolf is evil and bad. He represents pride, jealousy, anger, selfishness. The second wolf is a good wolf. He represents all the good in life (love, humility, joy and peace).

The young grandson then asked his grandfather, “Which wolf wins?”

The elder replied, “The one you feed.”

Looking back:

99.9% of our associates were solid. They were loyal, hard-working, dependable and caring. The other .1% were folks who ‘were on the wrong seat on the bus, or on the wrong bus.’ Over the years, I had to encourage our leaders not to develop processes that negatively impacted all because of a small few. The natural tendency was to penalize all for the miscues of the least common denominator. (Sort of like all kids in school being punished because one was talking.)

Instead, we valued making it a great place to work and dealt with the under-performers individually.

When other companies acted unethically, the natural tendency was to think about some type of retribution. Everyone wanted to inflict punishment or seek vengeance. Most of the time, I would instead encourage our teams to realize that we will lose some “battles” but if we stay true to our principles and values, we will win the war. Looking back, this approach almost always was the correct one.

When frivolous lawsuits came our way, the tendency was to return ‘fire’ with a lawsuit of our own. I was encouraged to use our size or our power to beat them down in court. Instead, we tried to understand their motives, find win-wins and ‘move on down the road’. In a few instances, we had to battle back but most times, we looked to “seek to understand” and settle our differences. This approach turned out to be the right one. We saved endless hours and dollars finding workable solutions rather than taking the approach of win-lose.

In summary, in most cases, when we fed the ‘good wolf’, we won.

When our hearts and minds matched our decisions, success followed.

Most of the time, we know the right answer. It is to do the right thing, which is often the hardest thing. Decisions become much easier when we base them on our values.

Wouldn’t it be great if the same principle worked when we are standing in front of the ice cream board trying to decide at Ben & Jerry’s?

Thanks for reading this and have a great weekend.

With a goal to “help the next guy in line”, Glen Cavallo, a 30+ year healthcare executive has chosen to share the many lessons he has learned with others. Glen does this by serving as a coach/advisor to leaders at all levels of organizations, as a board member and as he presents inspirational speeches at regional, national, annual and awards meetings.