The 4 Levels of Making the Right Decision

We’ve all heard the wonderful Thomas Edison stories of his ability fail forward.

Edison had an unwavering determination to succeed, even in the face of repeated failures. He approached each unsuccessful attempt as a learning opportunity rather than a reason to give up.

This perseverance allowed him to refine his ideas and inventions until he achieved the desired results.

But the key part of Edison’s success wasn’t his perseverance but rather his ability to learn.

Many people have the will to succeed; many have the determination to improve, and only those who understand how to learn to achieve the breakthroughs necessary for success.

How we process and remember critical information is paramount to achieving any endeavor. Our jobs as leaders are to make those around us understand, not remember.

Therefore, we must teach those we lead the right process for understanding.

There are really four levels of learning how to make the right decisions:

Level 1: In this group, we find people who never learn from their mistakes and constantly have reasons for failure that fall outside reality. They allow their egos to get in the way of their learning, developing a blind eye for what went wrong. In this group, people listen and don’t hear.

Level 2: In this group, we find people who understand their mistakes and promise never to repeat them, yet fall back into the comfortable pattern of making the same choices. Once again, ego plays a huge role in reverting back to our initial beliefs, ignoring the lessons we learned. People in this group always focus on proving themselves right, not the best decision.

Level 3: In this group, we shift from understanding our mistakes to learning from others. In this level, we are not laughing at the other’s misfortunes but rather completely understanding their process and eventual decision. We are using the hindsight of others to benefit ourselves.

Level 4: In this group, we learn from others’ successes and how they navigated toward making the best decision possible at the time. We have removed all blind spots from our process, and we have removed ego from our learning and decision-making methods. When we combine Levels 3 and 4, we have advanced our learning state and moved into understanding.

Had Edison been a Level 1 or 2 learner, his mistakes would never have allowed him to find the correct solutions.

Because he was focused on being a Level 4 learner, he could move from one failure to another with a powerful lesson he understood and didn’t need to remember.