First Principle – Context

Your decisions affect people.

Not in the way you think. We usually think people care about our decisions on the surface, that they “care” because life is all about us (we are natural narcissists.) 

However that isn’t it at all. While people may “care” about what we do, odds are they don’t because they too are making decisions and wondering if you care about them. 

Your decisions affect people because we live in a complex system. Everything builds on something else; there is no such thing as a clean slate. Because of this, it is imperative, as an impactful decision maker, to understand who and what your decisions affect.

To many teams and folks, this feels like overkill. I would caution you that over-indexing on context may, may lead to a rolled eye or two, but under-indexing can lead to a world war. Sounds extreme, but it has happened. 

Now, we may not have the decision power to change the lines on a globe, but we make decisions each and every day that change people on it.

So always contextualize. Find out who is affected by our decisions and then choose if it matters. 

Nothing happens in a vacuum.