The 5 Minute Leader: How The CEO Of U.S. Cellular Makes Fewer Decisions & The Litmus Test He Uses For Decision Making

How many decisions do you make each day, week, month, and year? Thousands? What if the secret to effective leadership is to make as few decisions as possible but to focus on the right ones?

Hello Leaders,

Today’s 5 minute leadership hack comes from Laurent Therivel the CEO of US Cellular which is the fifth largest wireless provider in America with 5,000 employees and annual revenue of over $4 billion dollars.

When I first started my business over 15 years ago, writing books, speaking, creating content, etc. I tried to do everything and make all of the decisions. Over time, I hired a team to help me do things but I still wanted to make all of the decisions. If a video was done, I wanted to approve the video, if a graphic was being made, I had to see it before it got posted.

Not only was I have to make decisions for myself but I put myself in a position where I was now having to make decisions for everyone else on my team! For many months I would work through the day and then realize that I would never actually get anything done even though I felt like I was working each day. The day’s would just fly by and I would sit there at 6pm each day asking myself “what did I even do today and where did my day go?”

Now, I try to make as few decisions as possible while giving accountability and autonomy to my team and that brings me to today’s leadership hack from Laurent.