Presidential Dialogues: Making Difficult Decisions

Presidential Dialogues

How do you make important decisions when you don’t have perfect information? When you know there will be resistance?

Recently, we convened six leaders from very different institutions to discuss how they have approached making difficult decisions. In this quick, practical paper (a 15-minute read) hear advice from these six presidents on making the difficult decisions:

What this paper presents is a departure from the traditional model for presidential leadership. Culturally, we acclaim decisive decision makers or heroic, charismatic personalities. But these six presidents were diverse in leadership style, approach, and personality, and all of them were skeptical of the value of decisive action unaccompanied by deep understanding of the institution’s culture and deep efforts to build trust and collaboration.

We hope their insights and experiences will be useful to you!

Read the paper.