Coming into the Christmas break, I am trying to close off as much work as possible. I want to leave the office with a feeling that I am done with the year.
Hopefully, I can then come back ready to start a fresh year, without much “half-done” work to complete.
But going through my outstanding work I realised that while I don’t have too much to actually do (action items), I still have a lot of things to make decisions about.
It seems backwards, because decisions should, I feel, take less time than the action to implement what I have decided on.
But this year it seems that the things that have slipped through the cracks and multiple decisions have taken longer than they should have. Either things are waiting for me to commit to the plan I have or that are waiting for me to get someone else to agree to a plan.
Based on that – even if I can get faster at doing my work, or better at pushing back on low priority work and distractions, I will still have a bunch of things hanging over my head.
So I thought I would review the things that are impacting my “decision cycle time”, or to put it another way, the average time that things wait for a decision.
Based on my not-entirely-scientific analysis, I can present the following decision impediments and improvements.
Being clear that a decision is actually needed
I realised that for some of the “decisions pending” in my list are there because I am either not entirely clear what decision I am waiting for, or I am not confident that someone is actually making the decision I am waiting for.
But how could a decision be pending, without it being clear that the decision is being made? One cause is my unfortunate habit of asking “Can I talk to you about this thing?” When I actually mean
- “Can I get you to make a decision for me about this thing?” ; or
- I am about to make decision X and I want your (input, endorsement, random comments) so that I can make it.
I think I sometimes get feedback or opinions when I wanted a decision and that the reason is that I did not actually specify that I wanted a decision. I could complain but to be fair, if people thought that they were being asked for their opinions then that is what they would share.
By being clear about what decision is needed and who needs to make it, I am confident I will get many things resolved much faster.
This seems obvious, but it is too easy for me to talk to people and assume they know the goal. So this is something I will do better now.
Analysis and collaboration as procrastination
Many decisions are complex and need some analysis, or they need input from multiple people and then they need to be communicated effectively. In those cases we should consult and analyse.
At the same time though, I have sometimes witnessed (or prosecuted) analysis as a form of procrastination. I have spoken to someone about a decision and then left the next step as:
- “Let’s analyse point Y in more detail and then make a decision”; or
- “Let’s run that by these people and then come back and talk about it”.
This would be OK if it the decision to be made depended on the analysis or the consulation. But in some cases I am analysing something that will not actually impact the core decision being made. The result is that the decision is being delayed unnecessarily, even if we seem busy.
iSo rather than defaulting to not deciding until I do “some analysis and consultation”, maybe I should ask myself whether what needs to happen for the specific decision to be made.
“How will this help us decide – will it alter the outcome?”
Me – from now on
Setting the wrong default
I like to record action items in meetings and when I do, I know that the action is much more likely to be done if it has a date and a name attached to it.
So it would make sense if I did the same thing for requests for a decision.
Instead of sending a nice proposal and asking people to read and agree to it, maybe I should add a default date for their response, such as:
- “Can you look at this and be ready for us to make a decision in the meeting on Thursday?”; or
- “I want to communicate a decision to these people by the end of the week, can you let me know if you are have any concerns with the message below, before Thursday, so that I can do that?”
Similarly – I think the default for some of my comms has been “can you let me know your decision” meaning that I am defaulting to to waiting for feedback before moving forward.
Perhaps a better default would be to say “I intend to adopt option 2 and will get moving tomorrow or Wednesday, can you let me know if you think I should pivot or tweak what i am doing.”
I also think that if the default is “if you don’t get back to me then we will wait” then it makes it easy for people to defer thinking about the decision while they take care of more urgent concerns.
I don’t think a default action is always appropriate but for some decisions I think people are happy as long as they know what is happening.
Equip people to make the decision
I realised that for some of my own lingering decisions, I can make a lot more progress if I pause to define how I will make the decision and what the drivers are.
Doing this could be as simple as rewording the decision:
- Decide whether to go for a walk, in order to cross this off my list
- Decide whether to retire this legacy product, based on the cost to replace it and the risk of not doing so
- Decide whether to do this … or decide how to do this
It is easy to assume we know why we are making a decision but sometimes I actually go around in circles until I share my dilemma or write it down. Then I realise there are multiple decisions or that actually the decision is obvious and I need to get onto planning.
Even worse though, I realise I have sometimes
- Asked people to decide “between A and B”, without actually explaining the reason we need to choose, or the impacts that the decision will have
- Jumped into the story half way and assumed people know what is going on (the “curse of knowledge”) or I have assumed that when they said yes, they knew what they were saying yes to
So by slowing down a little to clarify the information needed and chunking it in a digestible way, I expect I will get better decisions made faster.
So there you have it – some simple improvements to reduce the delay of waiting for a decision from others, or keeping people waiting for me.
I wish you a decisive and relaxing holiday period (if you are having holidays) and a great, clear and decisive new year.
James King 