For whatever reason, Mondays always seem to be charity day in the golf world. Lunch started half an hour ago, the shotgun start is at 12:30, and—as usual—I’m scrambling to get there, get my clubs on the cart, and beat the start horn.
I pull into the lot with ten minutes to spare, find my team, meet a couple of new faces, and we head off to the tee box. Luckily for us, we’re starting close to the clubhouse. No time wasted, and we’re on our way.
Like any scramble, there are highs and lows. Some shots are good, others not so much. Every hole comes with decisions: which ball do we play, who should putt first, what’s the best angle. The first player is the guinea pig, giving the rest of us a read. The last player carries the pressure—taking all the information from the three shots before and trying to make the best one of the bunch.
On one hole, our “best” drive wasn’t much to brag about. It leaked right, leaving us with a big tree between us and the green. A couple of guys swung and came up short. Then one of my friends pulled out a club, sent it high over the trees, and landed on the green.
Naturally, I asked him what club he hit. His answer was way different than the one I had in my hand. Now, not every golfer hits the same club the same distance, but he and I are about equal. His choice made me pause. I swapped out the club I had for something closer to what he’d used.
The result? A pretty good swing and an even better outcome for our team. The key wasn’t my execution—it was that I had information to adjust. Without seeing his shot first, mine would have been 10 or 15 yards short.
Decision-Making With Experience
Every day in life and business, we’re faced with decisions. Some are small and routine, others are big and defining. If it’s your first time in a situation, you don’t have the benefit of hindsight. You just make the best choice you can with the information available and then manage the result.
However, over time, experience stacks up. Each “first time” becomes a reference point. If you’re wise enough to pay attention—not just to your own experience but to the experience of others—you get better at making decisions.
That’s where the value of mentors, colleagues, friends, and family comes in. People who’ve been in the same spot before can give you intel. They can say, “Here’s how I approached it. Here’s how it turned out.” That doesn’t mean their path will be exactly right for you, but it gives you context. It broadens your field of vision before you swing.
Learning From the Network Around You
In business especially, we’re never making decisions in a vacuum. Whether it’s financial planning, hiring, or managing a project, we can either guess our way forward or we can learn from people who’ve been down the fairway before us. That’s what mentors do. That’s what good colleagues and partners do. They give us the confidence to adjust our club selection before we take the shot.
Golf is a pretty good metaphor for life in that sense. You don’t always get a perfect lie. Sometimes the tree is directly in front of you. But if you’re willing to listen, watch, and learn—from your own mis-hits and from the people around you—you give yourself a better chance of making the next swing count.
Decision-making is a daily habit. The better informed we are and the more we lean into experience (ours and others’), the more likely we are to end up where we want to be.
Food for thought, from the tee box to the boardroom.
Mark J Modzeleski, CFS, CLTC, AIF
President, Legacy Wealth Advisors of NY