In business, your ego is the first hostage you need to shoot.
Chris Phillips
President
Chromium Communications
Sometime in 2000
[Comment by Joe: This was said regarding the need to remove your emotions from the making of good decisions. It applies to politics, science, and home life as much or more as business.]
I am not sure if I would agree with that statement. My emotions and how I feel about something is what drives my decisions. If I feel strongly about something I will fight harder to defend my point versus something I don’t feel strongly about I might not care if my point is made. A good decision is made by weighing every aspect of your personality from your beliefs to your morals and also your emotions. Having said that…one needs to be able to swallow his pride when the decision he made turns out to be a bad one. I am going to make bad decisions as I go thru life. It is a part of learning…as long as I don’t make the same mistake twice, I will feel like I am still comming out ahead.
I can understand how you might disagree with that. I once asked someone how they determined truth from falsity. They told me, “It depends on how I feel.” Which, of course, leads to absurdities like one person believing the earth is a cube, another believing it is flat and each claiming they have the absolute truth. Belief is only loosely correlated with reality.
While I agree with Phillips, I also think it is justified to take into account your emotions and the emotions of others that will be affected by your decisions. That’s part of the evaluation of the entire situation in making a good decision. The point is, extending your example a bit further, that you may make better decisions if you “swallow your pride” BEFORE you make a bad decision. You may have thought the best way to do something was ‘A’ and someone else came up with path ‘B’ and although you haven’t committed you or your company to path ‘A’ yet but because it was YOUR idea you go with ‘A’ even though ‘B’ is better. In this specific case there is another way of saying it–“There is no limit to what a man can do or where he can go, if he does not mind who gets the credit.” (Dr. James Dobson)
I like that quote very much.