Deciding What Sucks The Least

Back a few years ago, I was on the road more than twenty days per month.

In an effort to instill some element of normalcy to my life, I decided that every Thursday, no matter where I was, would be ‘movie night’.  As a result, I saw some truly awful movies.

I remember one summer evening in particular, standing in the lobby of a movie megaplex in Warrenville, Illinois, staring up at the marquis trying to make a decision about which movie sucked the least.  I selected “Planet of the Apes”, and quickly realized I’d made a horrible decision.

This is a parable for two lessons that have been instructional to me as a manager:

1.     Sometimes, you don’t always get to pick the best alternative, but you need to choose the one that sucks the least.  A case in point: voting.  For most of the Wily Manager audience, voting rates are less than 50%, and with due respect to the Australians – yours would be lower too, if voting weren’t required by law.  People need to stop looking for the best alternative, and vote for the one that sucks the least.  It’s a primary requirement for democracy:  reel in your expectations!

2.     Delaying a decision often doesn’t improve the quality of the outcome.  If I had agonized over the “Planet of the Apes” decision, and sent it to committee, and then deferred it until better information was available, I still would have ended up seeing a crappy movie – it might have just been with different actors.

Of course, the other obvious element to this story is that the movie actually didn’t matter all that much.  It was incredibly minor, and the net outcome of going to a movie, or not (or how bad that movie was) matters very little.  Yet, in organizations, we see minor decisions agonized over all the time.  People end up spending more time debating where to hold an offsite meeting than they would spend talking with a friend contemplating suicide.

New Rule (with full credit to Bill Maher):  If you’re going to spend more than one minute on inconsequential decisions, flip a coin.  If you end up being wrong, you can correct course quickly.

In my case, I could have left the movie, and gone for a walk along the river in Naperville.  But then, I never would have seen Charlton Heston dressed up as a filthy, stinking ape.

Often you’re forced to make quick management decisions that are more consequential than which movie sucks the least.  You’ll need to do more than flip a coin, because making quick decisions can be dangerous.  If you’re not careful, it’s easy to step right into one of the common pitfalls, like ‘Going With Your Gut’ (which can make you appear reckless).

The Good Decision Making Video and Cheat Sheet combo were just added to the Wily Manager membership area, and it’s one of over 90 topics available now.   In it, we show you how to avoid 7 common ‘quick decision pitfalls’, and make quality decisions when you don’t have the luxury of taking a long time to gather information.

Become a member and get 8 free bonus gifts worth $187, plus instant access to all the existing tools and advice already available in the members-only area.   It’s jam-packed with Videos, Cheat Sheets, and other tools…and new content is added each and every week.

Next week we’ll be talking about Influencing Your Boss – you’ll learn how to get your boss to do what YOU want, without being a manipulator.  You won’t want to miss out – become a Wily Manager Member today.