I find myself in a constant battle with destructive and debilitating mindsets. So many people spend their time talking about practices, procedures, and systems that they overlook the ways of thinking that brought all of the above to life in the first place. Change the thinking and often the rest will change quite naturally.
One such mindset is the pursuit of the perfect decision. I know I am facing this mindset when I hear people talk about needing to make the “right” decisions or being afraid of making the “wrong” ones. They look at the world and assume that the successful organizations are the ones that made a series of perfect decisions.
The truth is that most successful organizations make a series of “better” decisions, not a lucky string of perfect decisions. Instead of talking about right and wrong they talk about better or worse. The goal is not just to avoid making poor decisions, but to avoid repeating poor decisions. This means that they generally place a much higher value on measurement and evaluation than their perfectionist counter parts. They are also talk less about abstract things like "success" and "failure" and more about movement and progress. These organizations are willing to let people experiment and even “fail” as long as each decision provides a learning opportunity and helps move the organization toward its vision.
The perfect decision mindset carries a high price tag; including missed opportunities, guilt over past decisions, fear over future decisions, and loss of creativity and growth to name a few.
Missed opportunities occur because we are so consumed with making the perfect decision (or more often afraid to be blamed for the wrong decision) that we just make no decision at all. The reality is that almost every opportunity comes with a countdown clock. Whether it is the 30-second elevator sales pitch or the 3 months you have to prepare for your next growth cycle, your decision has a clock ticking.
It is very seldom that no decision is the best decision. Yet, this happens alarmingly often when people have the perfectionist mindset. Team meetings may generate any number of ideas and strategies, but none of them are actually executed, measured, and evaluated. Ideas arise, are discussed, and then fade away. The “time clock” ends up making the decision as opportunities come and go.
Guilt over past decisions exists because things like “success” and “failure” of the organization are tied to specific decisions and the people who made them. Rather than motivating better decisions in the future this leads to greater fear over future decisions. That creates hesitancy, which adds to the previous issue of missed opportunities.
If, instead, we related things like success and failure to a series of decisions then they would be something that we share. We would see the reality that no one decision made or broke us, because every decision is affected by the ones made before it and itself will affect future decisions. Instead of focusing on particular decisions made by individuals we would begin assessing the movement of the entire organization. Certainly specific decisions must be measured and evaluated, but not as if they existed in a vacuum.
The perfectionist mindset limits creativity and growth on the “front end” (before decisions are executed) because so many decisions just fade away, losing any potential for learning they may have contained. It also limits learning on the back end by labeling decisions as good and bad or right and wrong.
[I am a stickler for using words that best communicate the intended meaning. As such I attempt to get my clients to avoid using words like “right” and “wrong” in anything except areas of absolute knowledge. If it is a legal, ethical, mathematical, or theological issue then it is proper to use such terms. If the decision is more relative such as marketing, operations, or customer relations then terms like “better” or “worse” are more appropriate.]
When something is labeled wrong or bad we have a natural tendency to distance ourselves from it. In many cases a better response is to dig in and see what can be learned from the decision, especially if we do not wish to repeat it. It is amazing how many times organizations make big breakthroughs while dissecting things that did not work as intended. On the other side is it often just as unhealthy to simple repeat decisions because they were "right" the last time. Without proper measuring and evaluating we do not know why the decision was right. In many cases repeating last years decision may not be the best option.
The process of measuring and evaluating decisions allows poor decisions to be redeemed. I am not trying to say that every decision is actually valuable, merely that every decision contains value. Successful organizations have systems that reward and promote better decisions while also limiting and learning from poor decisions. In this way they allow a person to redeem poor decisions, which decreases guilt over the past and removes fear over future decisions.
Questions for further diagnosis:
1) How many “good” ideas that are generated in team meetings never move beyond the meeting and get executed?
2) How are decisions measured and evaluated in your organization?
3) When evaluating decisions (or their measured results) do you look backwards (to the supporting decisions that made this one possible) and forwards (to the systems that may need to change to either repeat positive outcomes or remove negative ones)? This is particularly helpful when looking at decisions made by other organizations. It is much too easy to attribute success or failure to single events and consequently miss the principles that are actually responsible. Such principles are only revealed over time.
· For example when evaluating a recently fired employee one might be tempted to say that the “bad” decision was the hire. In reality the hire most likely occurred because of a certain need assessment, which led to a skill set requirement, which impacted the resume search process. Understanding the entire process provides more value than just trying to “hire better” next time.
4) What happens to people who make “bad” decisions in your organization? People who make “good” decisions? What would it look like to allow people to redeem decisions in your particular context?
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