Do you realize that every day you have the power to dramatically influence your world?
In fact, you do it every day whether you’re aware of it or not. I’m referring to the countless decisions each of us makes every day in our professional or personal lives. Every decision you make affects the quality and direction of your life to some degree.
Some decisions we make have more neutral consequences, while others have a profound impact. Think about your life experiences: wouldn’t your life be radically different if you had made different decisions? Even small decisions can have a major impact on your life if measured over the course of several years.
Think about all the decisions you make regarding your business or career just in the area of leadership alone:
- What is our mission?
- How do I most effectively communicate that?
- What are the best ways to motivate my employees?
- How should we allocate resources to most effectively achieve the mission?
- What is our strategic plan?
- To whom should I delegate authority?
- How should we mobilize our forces?
There are an endless number of examples we could examine which will affect our professional and personal direction and future.
Reasons For Not Making Decisions
So, if decisions have such a powerful influence in our lives, why do we tend to put them off? Here are three reasons I have observed in working with my coaching clients.
1. Fear of Failure
You may be afraid of making the wrong decision, so you resolve this by not making a decision. We’ve been taught in school to avoid making mistakes – instead we should strive to be perfect. But don’t we learn much more from our mistakes than we do from being “perfect”?
Show me someone who has not failed and I’ll show you a person who has not taken a risk. This isn’t to say that we should go around making reckless, impulsive decisions. We just want to be aware of how fear of failure can prevent us from making decisions at all.
2. Uncertainty About The Consequences
In the same vein, you may put off decisions because you believe that a decision shouldn’t be made until you’re certain it will work out. The truth is that decisions are made based on probability, not certainty.
For example. when you decide to hire a new employee, there are no guarantees that it will work out. There is only so much interviewing and background checking you can do, and then you must make a decision. If you wait until you’re certain, you will probably miss the opportunity.
3. Information Overwhelm
These days almost everyone is busier than they would like to be. We are deluged with information constantly thanks to the internet, e-mail, voice mail, mobile devices, etc. Then when we are pressured to make decisions based on all of this information that surrounds us, we often don’t know where to start.
The Cost of Not Making Decisions
So what’s happening when you avoid making decisions? You are probably associating more pain to making the decision than to NOT making the decision. If I’m afraid that my decision may be the wrong one, it will feel much more comfortable not making the decision or at least putting it off as long as possible.
The problem with this line of thinking is that we’re not factoring in the cost of not making the decision. But the truth is that no decision is a decision! Just as deciding has consequences, not deciding also carries a future result which could be even more detrimental to your business or career. You can probably think of key opportunities you missed out on because you waited too long to decide to act. The timing of the decision can be just as important as the decision itself.
So as an influential leader you must be decisive in action! In our next entry, we will share a six-step process to make effective decisions.
A collaboration with David C Miller, Author of The Influential Actuary
I think I made all of the above mistakes when it comes to making decisions over the years. As I read your blog, I thought of friends and clients who are stuck making important decisions – this is very helpful! Thank you
I’m glad this was helpful, Claudia!
Even knowing all that you have mentioned I still hesitate in making a decision, hoping someone else will make it for me or that things take care of themselves. I will try to do better.
Yes, it can be hard. Try to focus on the missed opportunities from not making the decision, and what you could be doing instead of spending the time debating.