Is your organization looking to become best in class? Are you striving to achieve breakthrough performance in business results – like sales, customer loyalty or brand differentiation? If it is, then it may be time for some decisive leadership.

I recently read an article in The Washington Post that talked about recent personnel changes by the Washington Redskins, our local NFL franchise. In this highly competitive world where coaches and players are held firmly accountable for their performance (i.e., where careers are made or broken by the number of games won in a single season), I was struck by the leadership perspective offered by Mike Shanahan, current head coach and 3-time Super Bowl winner (twice as a head coach): “A lot of people are afraid of being second-guessed. They make their decisions based on what other people say, rather than what they see with their own eyes, on general consensus. They don’t see it themselves; they ask other people’s opinions.”

Are the leaders of your organization behaving like this? Are they afraid to make decisions for fear of being blamed if results are less than expected? Are they relegating important decisions to general consensus? If this decision-making approach is failing to deliver the results you are expecting, then perhaps more decisive leadership is in order.

Sure, every decision entails some element of risk and not every decision will result in the desired outcome. Breakthroughs in performance often come from new ideas and almost always require leaders to assume some level of risk…and accountability.

Confident, informed and inspired leaders like Coach Shanahan know what it takes to drive breakthrough performance. What they need from you and the other members of your organization is a culture that rewards decisiveness and accountability.