Everyone suffers with indecision

"Deciders suffer alone; Nondeciders make everyone else suffer".  I usually like to post about stuff that happens at work or things I notice in my day to day activities, since I think blogging should add something back to the mix other than simple snarky attitude, but you cannot beat this headline from the Wall Street Journal (11/8) - nor the absolute spot-on identification of a problem many businesses face.  There's little downside to delaying or simply not making a decision, but the lack of clarity and direction that accompanies that lack of action impacts an entire organization.

The article continues and mentions a recent survey conducted by Sirota Survey intelligence, which found that three of the six main obstacles people face in performing their jobs are tied to decision making.  Simply not making a decision is one of the most damaging actions a manager can take, since the people who work for the manager look to him or her for guidance and direction, and to understand what's important.  By failing to make a decision, the manager creates a significant amount of uncertainty, which leaves the folks working for him in one of two states - the ones with more initiative will simply make assumptions and move on, while the majority will stop and wait for a decision, guaranteeing that nothing gets done.

The evidence of the non-decisive manager is easy to detect.  Simple clues like an inability to provide guidance or direction on a project or to make a simple yes or no decision.  Meetings which end with no clear action items or responsibilities.  Requests for more and more research into a particular path or approach.  Delays on commitments with no strong rationale.  All of these actions and attributes indicate that the manager is unwilling or incapable of making a decision.  This behavior will impact the team that reports to the manager, and the other business functions or business partners who are waiting for the results.

In this environment, many people are afraid of making decisions because they don't want to be responsible for the results.  Often in business today, one decision made with less than perfect information may in hindsight prove to have been a poor decision, and that may cost a person his or her job.  Often, not making a decision or delaying a decision as long as possible seems like the right choice, and for the individual manager, it may be.  But this behavior is devastating to the team.
How can we change this behavior?  First, don't lop people off at the knees who make decisions, even if sometimes those decisions are wrong.  The only way to make perfect decisions is to have perfect information.  If we hire people and pay them as managers, we must expect that they will use best judgment and even intuition on occasion to make a decision.  Second, be sure the reward systems are in place to encourage people to make decisions and keep the momentum rather than drag their feet waiting for more information.  Third, reward a significant failure that results in some new learned behavior.  Fourth, remove managers from positions of responsibility who are congenitally unable to make good, timely decisions.  Their failure to act impacts so many people that the costs of the reduction in productivity can't even be measured effectively.

Comments

[Richard Rowan]

Great blog and post. I like your four ideas for changing behaviors: very practical advice that I agree with. But I also believe the Sirota phenomenon is too systemic to address through any set of actions, to include changing out key people. It would take changing the culture, which can take decades.