Yes, you read the title correctly. In this column I am going to assert that in business, anyway, there really are no “right ” decisions. And actually, what I really mean is that there are no “wrong” decisions. I say it that way because many founders – and many business executives – spend way too much time agonizing over decisions, big and small, because they are afraid of making the “wrong choice.”

But the fact if the matter is that decisions are rarely black and white.There may be choices that are better or worse than others but there are very rarely decisions which are fully right or wholly wrong.  I should point out here that I am talking about decisions involving business issues, not issues of ethics, or legality. I’m talking about the day to day and month to month decisions about strategy, operations and tactics.

Because the other point to remember about those kinds of decisions is that, for better or worse, there are a lot of them to make.

Treating each decision as if it is a choice with a black and white outcome is a bit like thinking of each decision as if it is a contest that you will either win or lose. In reality, each decision is less like the outcome of a match or game more like deciding what play to call while in the middle of the game.

In other words, on balance, you need to make more decisions that take you in the direction you want to go, and fewer that don’t. To overextend the sports analogy, you don’t need to go 10 and 0, you just need to be up by 14 at half time.

And this is where I get to relate this topic back to the “Five Forces of Business Acumen” model that I talked about in an earlier column. One of the most useful things about that model is that its central point is that you can never serve all the needs of your business at the same time. There will always be competing priorities that try to drive your decision making in different directions.  That’s why we call them forces. Any decision that you need to make will always involve reconciling those forces. 

Even when the decision is pretty obvious – like focusing on a short-term cash problem at the expense of other longer-term priorities – it can still feel like the wrong answer. It feels like there must be a better way that gets you all of what you need instead of having to compromise. But the truth is that, almost certainly, there isn’t.

This is almost true even in other situations the choices are not stark or as obvious. It could be a choice between pursuing multiple small leads that would come in fairly quickly and generate some cash, or choosing to pursue a single big opportunity that will take longer but will cover the cost of significant R&D and also lead to future work. The forces of cash – and maybe profit – will drive you to the first option, the forces of assets (your IP) and growth will drive you to the second.

Neither decision is a priori, right or wrong. The choice between them will be driven by other factors, including your cash position, but also considerations like how much work is left to be done to develop your technology or product. What your investors are saying. What your customers expect. Depending on those factors you will end up making a decision that makes some factors a priority over the others.

And no matter how careful your weighing of those priorities is, the decision will end up working out. Because the situation will continue to develop your priorities and needs will shift. The choice you made may look better or worse at some point in the future, but that does not make it right or wrong – and there is no value in applying that judgement. Instead, you need to spend your time evaluating your priorities and applying them consistently to the situation you find yourself in. 

In my experience, the real value of the business acumen model is that it will allow you to reduce decisions down to the consideration of a manageable number of factors – each of which is connected to a specific priority. In effect, it will turn every decision into an apples-to-apples comparison. So, if you understand your priorities, you will simplify the process of making the myriads of choices you face every day.

If you are in a position that you want to focus on growth – make decisions that are driven by growth. If it is time for you to demonstrate you can operate at a profit – make decisions that are driven by operational efficiency and gross margin. Doing either of these things will mean making compromises somewhere else. This is not wrong. This is business.

My basic point is that spending time agonizing over a decision, hoping to find the “right” decision is not really very helpful. It is far better to develop an efficient way of making decisions against a coherent set or priorities so that you preserve mental and physical bandwidth to implement the decisions you have made. 

Because there is an old adage in the military that a bad plan well executed is almost always better than a good plan poorly executed. In other words, if you spend all of your time trying to find “the right” decision you will probably end up feeling like you made “the wrong” one – if you do not spend the requisite amount of time executing it with care and discipline.

So, stop worrying so about whether you are doing the right things, and spend more time working on doing them right.