One resolution I’ve made for 2012 is to take a strong stance on more issues. I’ve always felt some people are too opinionated about things they don’t know enough about, which probably made me overcompensate and not form strong opinions to share. Some friends have pointed out that even when I know a lot about things, I often times don’t take a strong position about them. Instead, I comprehensively recite both sides of an issue, but I don’t pick a side for things like:

•  Is this startup idea good?
•  Which design looks better?
•  Who deserves more from a partnership?

I used to think the easiest think to do is to have a strong opinion while the harder part was having a true understanding of both sides. However, a good friend recently shared the following with me, which completely changed my perspective:

Strong opinions are important because you need to believe in something to guide your decisions in order to accomplish anything. It’s the difference between being an author and a book reviewer. The author has to decide what is important and what should be cut and what the point of the book is. Every word that is in the book is there because the author decided it should be there. The book reviewer can read a book and comment on the decisions that were made by the author, but he will never be able to write a book because he can not make the important decisions, he can only comment on the decisions others have made.

Being well rounded and understanding that both sides of an argument have pros and cons is easy. It’s moving past that and making a decision that is hard. As an entrepreneur by definition you can’t be content to accept both sides of the coin and sit idly by. You have to consider both, and then fully commit to one. Strong opinions lead to vision because only when you have made a decision about what is important and what is right can you start to see how the future should be.

So maybe by having stronger opinions this year, I’ll have a better sense of what’s coming the following years. That seems worth trying for at least.