How to Make Decisions When You’re Angry, Sad or Fearful

Managers are people.

We suffer through emotions.

We go through ups and downs of life.

So, how do you make proper decisions when you’re feeling angry or sad or fearful?

According to Nick Huber:

Surround yourself with smart people who aren’t YES MEN.

Nick Huber

Huber goes on to say:

“It is tempting (especially as you gain more success) to surround yourself with people who agree with you on everything.

Don’t do this.

I encourage the leaders of all of my companies to stand up and call me out if they see a potential issue. If they see a blindspot. Or if they flat out disagree with the direction we are heading.

The CFO at my self storage company pulled this card on me in 2022. He went on vacation and left me to underwrite a few deals we had in the pipeline.

I really liked one deal and made an aggressive offer ($5 million).

He got back and stood up to me and made us back out of the contract. And it was the best decision we could have made (it was overvalued for a few reasons I didn’t properly identify). It saved us a lot of headache and money in the future because he had a different (and correct) view of the 4 things that impact risk discussed above.

It was a learning experience for me.”

---

AI IN BUSINESS

We hear a lot about the doomsday scenarios with AI such as increase in fraud, but I have a more optimistic outlook on AI. And, 63% of cybersecurity professionals believe AI can help with threat detection.