The longer you delay making a decision, the more you are actually making a decision and not realising it. The only difference being that instead of you making the choice for yourself, in the future time will make it for you.
A few years into my career as a manager in a fast moving consumer goods company our department was headed up by a very charismatic and passionate Scottish man. One of the principles he used to drum into us was that we needed to have control over the results we delivered. Whether performing poorly or performing well, we needed to understand why. His basic premise was that our outcomes should be controllable and the results we achieve should never be a surprise. The term he used to describe this kind of managerial control was “grip”. Hearing the word grip roll off his tongue with the Scottish accent had the effect of making this lesson very memorable.
The challenge, however, is that in the business environment very few variables can be controlled and predicted with certainty. Thus there was always a risk that some unseen variable would influence our results and we just would not be able to explain it. The prospect of getting a forecast wrong became quite terrifying. The safest course of action was to try and mimic the past when making future projections, in the hope that they would play out the same way.
Sometimes we had to predict the proportion of sales that would come from exports. The export sale was unpredictable and when unforeseen export demand arrived there usually was insufficient stock to supply the orders. In the alternative scenario sometimes we would request stock from an export customer and that demand would fail to materialise. The safest way to show grip again was just to be passive and simply not commit to any additional export demand at all.
As the year comes to an end usually people like to take holidays. I remember chatting with some friends about their holiday plans and realising I hadn’t decided what I wanted to do. The 2 best options were visiting family out of the country or having a local vacation. For the longest time I just couldn’t decide because I found it tough to predict what COVID travel restrictions we would have if any. As it came closer to the end of the year I had decided but in the midst of my indecision airfare prices had risen 40%.
The world can be very uncertain and ambiguous. But when we take too long to make a decision we are actually making a decision. We are choosing to have our destiny completely in the hands of 3rd parties or fate. We are choosing to forgo the chance that the coin toss in our favour. Even if the coin toss is not in our favour we are forgoing the opportunity of knowing and of learning.
We don’t know if you will get the job but apply anyway. We don’t know if he or she will like you, but ask them out anyway. We don’t know if your business plan will succeed, but implement it anyway. We don’t know if your new hire will work out, but employ them anyway. Make a choice. Don’t wait until time runs out and makes that choice for you anyway.
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