I had an interesting conversation with someone who received some constructive feedback during their appraisal. They were told they’re a ‘very speedy decision maker’ – and it wasn’t exactly a compliment. They recognised that they sometimes made quick decisions just to get things off their plate, but it left them wondering whether there’s a right way to approach decision-making, especially since their team had started questioning the quality of those decisions. Effective decision-making as a leader is extremely important, so let’s unpack it.
Is there any such thing as too quick a decision? In short, yes there is.
You need to balance how important it is for the decision to be accurate with how important it is for the decision to be quick. If it doesn’t need to be particularly accurate because it’s not a particularly important decision, then speed is fine. It might also be OK for it to be less accurate because it’s easy to backtrack or pivot if it turns out to be wrong. Amazon call this a ‘two-way door’ decision because you can go back through the door and make the decision again.
Speed vs. accuracy
If a decision needs to be made quickly, then accuracy may need to take a hit. If you need to recruit a new team member to start next week because you’re going to be without IT support for the week otherwise, you may have to reduce your concern with finding the perfect candidate and instead find someone who you think will be good enough. If you think you can’t be accurate enough, can you find a way to slow the decision, or put in a way of being able to go back on the decision later if it turns out to be wrong? For example, could you offer the IT worker a temporary contract which can become permanent if they impress you?
Find out more from your team
If someone’s giving you feedback on your decision-making, or your team are questioning your decisions, this would suggest that there is a problem somewhere. Are there examples of decision-making situations where, by slowing down, you could have made a better decision? I would recommend – with humility – asking your team for some examples of times when they think you have been too speedy, and then work through with them, or through your own reflection where the decision-making could have been bettered by slowing down.
Slowing down decision-making
If you can see a justification for slower, more accurate decision-making in some circumstances, up the accuracy by considering the various options that are open to you, and how likely each of them would allow you to meet your ideal decision outcome, or how close to the outcome you could get. For example, would recruiting an IT person this week likely guarantee your company will be able to handle major IT problems next week (yes)? If you lack the data to evaluate this – for example, the IT candidates’ CVs and experiences of handling major IT problems, you could seek this data to inform your decision.
Three resources to improve your decision-making skills:
- An excerpt of the only decision-making book a leader needs, written by a professional gambler:
https://www.annieduke.com/site/uploads/howToDecide_excerpt.pdf - Good reasons to slow down your decision-making (and more information on how to do it):
https://www.forbes.com/sites/chrislowney/2021/01/21/make-better-decisions-slow-down-if-the-lion-isnt-coming/ - Good reasons to speed up your decision-making (and advice on how to do it):
https://hbr.org/2022/03/how-to-make-great-decisions-quickly
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