Three Tricks to Make Hard Decisions Easier

Entrepreneurs often face what feel like impossible or unknowable choices. Here are three decision-making tricks I relied upon as cofounder and CEO of Netflix-and that I still use today

- By Marc Randolph

Everyone makes decisions. But entrepreneurs have an especially challenging time of it because so often we must make decisions based on incomplete, inconclusive, and often contradictory data.

In my four-decade career as an entrepreneur, I have learned a few things about how to make those decisions, including the most important thing of all: Just make a decision. It may sound trite, but it's also just plain true. When so much feels like it's on the line, it's easy to become paralyzed, unable to choose which direction to take. But even a wrong decision is better than no decision because at the very least, by implementing a wrong decision you'll learn a little more about the problem you're trying to solve, making it easier to know which way to go next time.

That's why, whenever I'm forced to make difficult decisions, I rely upon a few tricks that usually make the process easier.

Here are three of my favorites.

1/ Knock the flagpole down.

In 1970, in the wake of the Kent State shootings, a group of students marched into their local McDonald's demanding that the store's flag be lowered to half-staff. The store complied. Shortly afterward, the company's then-chairman, Ray Kroc, was offended and demanded that the manager once again raise the flag. He did. Upon seeing that, the students threatened to burn the restaurant to the ground unless the flag was again lowered. With things spiraling out of control, the store manager called Fred Turner, then the president of McDonald's. Turner thought for a moment and, as the story goes, he said, “Tell you what you do. The next delivery truck that arrives, have him back into the flagpole and knock it down.