Being Right A Lot

A framework for how you can make better decisions faster

Mar 24, 2022

I have a confession to make. Last year, I predicted that we were on the verge of the Great Reopening. I had taken a trip to Boston in June, met with customers, partied with coworkers, and had a grand old time slumming around in the Seaport.

After more than a year trapped by COVID, vaccines finally gave us hope. We yearned to get out of our houses, meet people in person, and not freak out about social distancing. I tweeted that masks would disappear next month. Newspapers were going on about “shot girl summer”. Folks were making travel plans. I even jetted off to Milan.

But nope, we were all wrong. COVID said not so fast and slammed us with two even more viral strains that sent us back into isolation mode. Well, not exactly, as it seemed like much of the south and middle part of the US basically shrugged it off. For the rest of the world however, we got more lockdowns and restrictions.

On a happier note, it appears this summer will actually be our coming out of pandemic party. I was in SxSW this past week in Austin and life was pretty much back to normal. For the most part, there were no masks, no distancing, no showing vaccination cards. I did hear of one colleague who caught COVID, but it was merely a nuisance rather than a real concern.

I was on the fence about going to SxSW though. In my role as a startup advocate, I need to be careful to allocate my time wisely in order to connect with as many entrepreneurs and founders as possible. Would it be busy like years past? Who would be there worth meeting up with? Was it going to be worth my time to attend?

Well from my last post I shared, it was definitely worth the time. I am still going through the follow-ups and not even half-way done yet (funny how regular work does not stop when you attend a conference). Did I know though that it would work out beforehand? What led me to make that decision?

Earlier this week, I had my Forte review. Those of you who are Amazonians know that is the annual performance review process. You ask colleagues to review you, then your manager schedules time to go over your superpowers and your growth areas. Fortunately, my review turned out to be quite positive.

One of the positive points of feedback connects to one of the Amazon Leadership Principles called “Are Right, A Lot”. The principle is described as:

“Leaders are right a lot. They have strong judgment and good instincts. They seek diverse perspectives and work to disconfirm their beliefs.”

In the past year, I had a pretty good string of wins. The AWS Startups Show on Clubhouse was a big hit with customers and listeners. My talks on topics like “Community-Led Growth” and “Founder Sales” at places like Web Summit were well received. The events I attended such as SxSW and The North American Bitcoin Conference yielded a lot of AWS interest.

Truth be told, I do not know whether any of these events or projects will work out. They could have easily been massive flops. What I do have though is three concepts that have helped me along in being directionally correct; destination clarity, decision muscle memory and pattern recognition.

Destination clarity could also be called vision. I tend to shy away from using the word vision though because it has more of an association with a corporate or organizational framing. While the destination I have for my life and career might align with the company I work for, that is only a component of what matters holistically in terms of my long-term outlook.

The destination as I define it is what outcomes I want to achieve. Even if I do not know right now what is the path to get there, I know I can see the signal ahead. Greater signal clarity comes as I make choices that help define the shape of that destination.

This leads us to decision muscle memory. I mentioned “one way and two way doors” in the last post as a framework for making faster decisions. If you know that most decisions will not end catastrophically, then you have more freedom to take on risk and to experiment. The point about muscle memory is to emphasize that in order to get good at making decisions quickly, you need to make a lot of decisions.

This is the biggest difference I see working in startups versus big companies. In startups, decisions are being constantly made. Even if stuff breaks, the startup is moving so fast, it fixes things in flight and moves ahead without pause. In the big enterprises, the operating model is status quo. The internal motion is driven not by decisive action, but through inertia. This is why big failed projects can last for years even when it was obvious early on that it was a disaster.

Making lots of decisions quickly though also has its downsides. It means you are also wrong a lot. Early in my career, I experienced epic failures, from blown sales calls, to clients canceling contracts, to huge career-ending confrontations with bosses. In founding my own tech startup, I can state without a doubt that I made every mistake one could make as an entrepreneur.

The basketball legend Michael Jordan once said this:

“I’ve missed more than 9,000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. Twenty-six times I’ve been trusted to take the game-winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.”

How was it that he found success? That is where pattern recognition helps us. By having those past experiences, you start to get a sense of what “good” or “winning” or “successful” looks like. This is why athletes and performing artists practice so much. The practice provides the reps in gaining a feel for the right motions. In turn, this builds the foundation for establishing successful patterns.

We flex those same patterns in sales. Early in our careers, we are usually told to cold call. We all suck at it. Then over time and repetitions, we get better and more confident. We listen more for inflections in voice, we are more agile in handling objections, we have a better sense of how to navigate a call. The same process applies to writing sales emails, negotiating with prospects, working with managers, and anything else for that matter.

There are no shortcuts to pattern recognition other than doing the work. A common Amazon saying is, “there is no compression algorithm for experience”. There are some methods however that you can use to accelerate or improve the acquisition of pattern recognition.

Find a mentor - find a person that is in already in place that matches your own desired career path and is available to help
Shadow more senior colleagues - can be less structured and more flexible than a formal mentorship arrangement
Hire a career / executive coach - this can be costly but a good coach can do wonders for your career
Join a startup - there is no better environment when it comes to acquiring experience and taking on responsibility
Take on a more senior role - with more responsibility comes more decision making opportunities
Collaborate across teams - seeing how other teams operates helps you better navigate internal politics
Read more books - provides a good source for ideas and framework that you can then put into practice
Volunteer at a non-profit - excellent environment to see human dynamics at work outside of purely monetary motivations

Being right a lot is an important part of your value as a sales professional. Your customers depend upon you to provide your experience to help them solve their problems. The good B2B sales professionals are advisors to customers, not order takers. By having clarity into your own career, having the muscle memory to work quickly, and leveraging your experience built over time, you can become that trusted and credible advisor.

What are your experiences in decision making? Do you have any frameworks or ideas you have adopted yourself or with your team? Let me know in the comments below!

Mark Birch, Founder of Enterprise Sales Forum