Make Better Decisions Like Peyton Manning with Xero

This Sunday, Peyton Manning will walk up to the line and look across at the best defense in the NFL. He will survey the entire field, internalize the game situation, and make the best decision possible for his team on that given play.

In an instant.

It’s Super Bowl week, which has football on my mind.

There are many exciting things about the Super Bowl – most of which have nothing to do with football – but I’m especially excited about this Super Bowl because we get to watch Peyton Manning.

Manning is no doubt one of the best quarterbacks ever to play football, but what is most interesting about Manning is his ability to make decisions.

Quick Decisions

In this way, playing quarterback is a bit like running a business.

Of all the things that will define you as a leader – your ability to make quick, difficult decisions stands at the top of the list.

We wish we could know for certain the result our decision would produce. We hesitate to pull the trigger, because…what if it doesn’t work?

When Manning makes a decision on what play to run, he does not know what the end result of his choice will be. But he makes the call anyway. He acts in the face of uncertainty and unknown, to give his team the best chance to succeed.

Here are 2 things we can learn from Peyton Manning making choices at the line of scrimmage.

Know the entire situation

In football, you have to make a choice based on the entire circumstance. When Peyton Manning makes a decision in a football game, he is not simply thinking about what plays he has as options.

He is thinking about:
• What the defense is doing
• What down it is
• What the score is
• How much time is left
• How many time outs we have
• Which players are on the field
• And many other things…

When you make choices, you don’t make them in isolation. The key to good decision-making is having a complete awareness of the entire situation and where you are trying to go.

This is what a service like Kahuna Accounting does. We give you a real-time view of your numbers so you can make the best choice possible.

The best choice, not the perfect choice

Peyton Manning might lose in the Super Bowl Sunday. He might make decisions that really backfire. He might fail.
But he won’t fail because he failed to make the choice.

He’s going to take in all of the information available and put his team in the best position to succeed. Maybe they will, maybe they won’t.

You can’t sit back and wait until you come up with the perfect answer. Many times it’s not there. We never what the actual result of our decisions will bring. All we can do is take action and make the best choice.

If we take in all the information available, we can at least be confident of making the best choice.

In the comments below, give me your Super Bowl predictions. Closest guess wins one of my favorite books!