One of the things I’ve learned is that making a decision doesn’t mean your responsibility for that decision is over.

If it’s a complicated decision and I give the order or make the call, I own what happens next. I can’t give the direction and walk away assuming everything downstream is going to happen exactly the way I pictured it.

That doesn’t mean I have to physically stand on the site and watch every step. It means I need to understand my decision well enough to know what the next few steps should look like.

Then I need to pay attention.

Is it progressing the way I expected? Did something change? Did my decision create a problem farther down the line that I didn’t anticipate? Is there a point where we need to stop, adjust, and make another decision?

I learned that through experience, and it changed how I apply the principles I lead by.

The principle might still be right. What needed to change was how I applied it.

Now it’s something I teach other people as well. If you make the decision, own the decision. Understand what should happen next, and don’t walk away from it just because the decision has already been made.