Thinking fast, making decisions faster

There’s a lot written, particularly in the UK & US, about how we all need to make decisions more quickly. That somehow there’s a direct benefit to all decision-making being fast.

These over simplified pieces of advice we are bombarded with are often lacking the context for when we should be making decisions faster. And conversely when we should stop, think and listen some more.

To test this further, if we look at the top reasons from Harvard Business Review  that cause products to fail, we see the following:

• The company cannot support fast growth…
• The product falls short of claims and gets bashed ...
• The new item exists in ‘product limbo’ ...
• The product defines a new category and requires substantial consumer education – but doesn’t get it ...
• The product is revolutionary, but there’s no market for it ...

From this, it’s clear that the primary underlying cause is predominantly a lack of listening, planning and empathy, rather than slow decision making. Indeed it could be argued that speed was part of the reason that caused these things to occur.

Decision making is not something to be benchmarked just by time. Faster is not better in all circumstances. Decision making should be benchmarked by quality, the level at which they’re taken, the risk being taken and the time taken to make them.

My own personal example of this false expectation of speed driven decision making comes from when I was in my first commercial job in a PC manufacturer. The CEO, Product Director and R&D Director came to my desk without warning and asked me which of two different keyboards that we supplied we should stop using. Their premise for asking me was that I looked after all returns and repair across the company, so I’d be able to tell them which is the more reliable. A reasonable expectation. However, I had no data on how many of each we sold, what they cost, whether they had different use patterns – so I was lacking key information that would inform this decision.

I was pretty new and fairly young, meaning I didn’t yet have the self confidence to point out that I wasn’t able to answer that question in the round. In the end, feeling the pressure, I gave them an answer and they went way happy. They had their quick answer, but I’m still not sure to this day whether it was the right one – but it taught me a valuable lesson.

Since then, I’ve learned ways to both identify a more appropriate rate of decision making depending on the context of the situation I’m in. For those who know the Cynefin framework (thecynefin.co), it provides a methodology that you can apply in both work and home settings for how to assess in what way you should be thinking.

If it’s chaotic, take control, take action, assess the impact

If it’s complex (cause and effect are not identifiably linked), experiment, see what the effect is and repeat if helpful

If it’s complicated (cause and effect are linked but in a way that’s not obvious), bring in experts who’ve already solved this problem before to see which way is the best for you

And if it’s simple, apply best practice

The challenge here is personal bias – if you’ve lived in the world of process development all your life, you’ll see all situations as a failure of process. Even if the situation is entirely chaotic. If your experience is heavily weighted to being in startups, all process is a waste of time as they get in the way of innovation. I’m over-emphasising for the purposes of illustration, but the bias will be there, so keep that in mind.

So how do I use this in real life.

If I’m making fast decisions, I also check that either it’s because we’re in a best practice situation where the answer is reasonably well established in other similar situations, then a fast response is reasonable.

If I’m less certain that I’m on firm ground I’ll take more time, more data and more advice, then I’ll also want to look at what are my routes to corrective action if I’m wrong.

And in all situations, I’ll want to know the impact of my decision. Am I deciding whether we walk around the part clockwise or anti-clockwise, or am I deciding how many lifeboats should be on a cruise ship.

So, next time some tells you to hurry up and make a decision, think about the context and consequences, and decide if fast is fine.