Most companies are paralysed by institutionalised inaction. This causes delays and adds huge cost. People often confuse urgent with important.
It may be easier to make decisions when you wait until they become urgent. Everyone focuses on the issue, and people use the circumstances to justify the means, cutting across lines of authority. Senior executives get involved, other meetings are cancelled, and colleagues commit. Chaos reigns. Letting things slide until they become issues is bad management, not an excuse for half-baked solutions.
But it’s better and cheaper to deal with the important issues before they become urgent. If you don’t have time to do something properly, where are you going to get the time to do it again? Avoid perfectionism, stop waiting for the single correct answer, and go with your instinct. Reversing out of a wrong decision usually costs less than not making one at all. Delegate decision-making to teams—you can trust them to do the right thing.
Make sure you take the difficult decisions first.
