Nick Tasler on Decision Making

Nick Tasler is an internationally acclaimed thought leader on the science of decisions and their impact on the growth of leaders, teams and organizations. He is also a leadership columnist for the Harvard Business Review and the #1 best-selling author of The Impulse Factor: An Innovative Approach to Better Decision Making and Domino: The Simplest Way to Inspire Change. Nick’s work has been featured by The New York Times, Fast Company, Bloomberg, Fox Business, NPR, BBC, NBC, CBS and other leading media outlets all around the world.

As an organizational psychologist and keynote speaker, Nick has helped tens of thousands of leaders apply a simple decision framework for transforming seasons of change into periods of unprecedented personal and professional growth at the world’s most respected organizations ranging from Microsoft, JP Morgan Chase, and Target to 3M, Accenture, the Wharton School, Yale University and more.

Nomadic by nature, Nick and his wife and their four kids live in…lots of places, ranging from Minnesota to Puerto Rico.

Nick had a number of amazing insights during our conversation. Some of them include:

“The right decision in the moment is not nearly as valuable if isn’t tied to some overarching purpose and direction” (7:00).

“Every good business needs to have an overarching, strategic direction. A statement of where we are trying to go that is deeper than a mission statement” (7:30).

“We all want health, wealth, and happiness. We all want to make a difference... But quite often these things will come in conflict with each other. What do you do then?” (8:30).

“As human beings, we have somewhere between 8-10 universal values” (11:45).

“Your decision pulse is something that you choose, and at different times we’re going to put different things higher” (13:30).

“The core of my definition of freedom is I want to be free to think about what I want to think about when I want to think about it” (21:15).

“This is what I’m wanting to do and I’m willing to take any risk to make it happen” (27:45).

“We need to start stepping out of our comfort zone and just playing for the next week” (33:30).

“It’s all about testing your gut, rather than blindly trusting your gut” (37:25).

“We can take risks, but we don’t have to bet the farm every time” (37:30).

“Of course, we want to keep our customers happy and make money… but for our business, given our unique strengths in this particular marketplace, what is going to be OUR focal point?” (43:30).

“It’s ok to take a risk as long as it’s directionally correct” (44:10).

“Cognitive ability is important, up to a certain level, in leadership” (47:00).

“What is the flow state? It’s a situation where the rest of the world just melts away and you can focus on the task at hand” (52:05).

“There’s value in presenting an idea to somebody that gets them to think different about the way that they’re thinking, behaving, and relating to other people. That’s what inspiration is” (55:30).

“I firmly believe that you can accomplish anything you want this year. But you can’t accomplish everything you want this year” (1:02:00).

“You have to make a decision on what you’re going to shoot for and what you’re going to quit” (1:02:15).

“You haven’t made a decision until you’ve decided NOT to do something else, to quit something else” (1:03:30).

Make sure to check out Nick on Twitter, as well as on LinkedIn and Instagram.

Thank you so much to Nick for coming on the podcast!

I wrote a book called “Shift Your Mind” that was released in October of 2020, and you can order it on Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Additionally, I have launched a company called Strong Skills, and I encourage you to check out our new website https://www.strongskills.co/. If you liked this episode and/or any others, please follow me on Twitter: @brianlevenson or Instagram: @Intentional_Performers.

Thanks for listening.

-Brian