Welcome to How Leaders Lead. I'm Kula Callahan here bringing you another edition of three more

questions with David Novak. David, it's so fun to do these debriefs with you. How are you today?

I'm doing terrific, Kula. And I'm really looking forward to today's conversation because we're going

to have a deeper dive with Brian Nicol, the CEO of

Chipotle. And Brian used to work for me when I was at Young Brands and I'm so proud of the job

that he's done at Chipotle and everything that he's getting done there.

He's certainly done a tremendous job and I'm excited to get your take on some of the concepts

that you spoke with Brian about.

So without further ado, let's get into our questions.

Question number one. When Brian took over a CEO of Chipotle, he took time to decide what kind of CEO he

wanted to be. And he said that he wanted to be the type of CEO who isn't afraid to make the decisions that need to be made.

David, how can leaders get better at making those tough decisions that leaders are sometimes faced with making?

Well, I think the real point that you're trying to make here, Kula, is that leaders push those

tough decisions away because they are tough. It creates conflict in an organization and many times

they're controversial. But I think what a leader has to recognize is if they have that decision,

it's their job to make it.

They've got to make those tough calls because their people are looking for them to do it.

When leaders don't make the tough decisions, they don't make the tough calls, things get stalled, things slow down, and the urgency that you want to have in your

organization dissipates. And so you cannot be a leader that shoves the tough things aside.

You have to take those tough decisions on, make a decision after you've done the proper analysis,

done your homework, and then move on and

execute that decision to the best of your ability until you learn something that says maybe

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