The relief of decision making – Day 118/139

Achieving anything requires someone to decide how to do it. This is plain and simple but still decision-making can be made extremely complicated.

Think of meetings.

Meetings are the blood and veins of the corporate life. In a good meeting everyone gets to express their opinion and present the pros and cons of different solutions. More than often the final conclusion is that there isn’t enough information available to make the decision. Then someone tells who does what to the next meeting.

This dilemma of decision-making is well illustrated in my favorite quote from the TV series Band of Brothers:

Lieutenant Dike wasn’t a bad leader because he made bad decisions. He was a bad leader because he made no decisions.

Some decision makers live in the illusion that their role is to make people happy by only making right decisions. I will argue that instead they should be making decisions to make people relieved.

I was in a meeting today, where it seemed no conclusion was to be made. When the decision was finally made it was a huge relief for everyone. Not just because the meeting was over but because making a decision allows everyone to spend time on doing instead of further investigating.

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2 responses to “The relief of decision making – Day 118/139

  1. Juha Nikola

    Paradox of the decision making is that usually decision have to be made before all the requirements for the decision are known.

    Nobody needs perfectly prepared decisions that are absolutely too late. Perfection is the worst enemy of the good.

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