Part of what makes my job so much fun is being exposed to a variety of organizations in a wide variety of industries. The culture of these organizations vary widely, and is probably best manifested in how people make decisions. In some places, people gather as much information as they can, they discuss possible courses of action, and then they pull the trigger on a decision.
Other organizations have rambling, unfocused discussions, refer things to subcommittees, defer decisions seemingly indefinitely, and then wonder why their organizations consistently fail.
People can argue whether the greater evil is in making decisions to quickly or too slowly, and you can probably guess which side of equation I will argue for with the following list:
Things that delay decisions:
- Needing perfect information before committing. It would be nice if you had all the available information at your disposal, but by the time you gather and process all that data, it’s possible your decision won’t matter anymore.
- Being too risk adverse. When people are deathly afraid of making a mistake, they will hesitate to make decisions. What is not part of their calculations is that their delay carries a certain amount of risk too.
- Trying to keep everybody happy all the time. Making decisions usually means having to make trade-offs of some sort. By saying yes to one course of action, you are saying no to another, and in the process, you are going to upset someone. This is a key reason why the public sector often fails to make timely, quality decisions.
- A top-heavy or micro-managed business. In this case, only one person, or a small number of people are permitted to make any decisions, and as such become a bottleneck. Organizations that push decision making down the hierarchy to the most appropriate level are much more agile, and ultimately perform much better.
- Poor decision-making process. Sometimes, people fail to recognize a decision point when it appears in front of them. If they don’t recognize the fork in the road, they certainly won’t know which turn to take.
- Fear: Contrary to popular belief, it is sometimes better to make the wrong decision today, realize it tomorrow and then correct your course of action, than it is to delay a decision for weeks or months.
Now I’m really having a hard time deciding which video clip to include this week. One of the candidates is a Monty Python bit (People’s front of Judea) that contains foul language that might offend some. The other is a clip of George W. Bush talking about being a decision-maker, that may offend some American viewers.
I could ask everyone to weigh-in, and then make my decision, or I could just flip a coin, but I can’t decide which decision making process is better.