Decide!

Good morning all & happy Monday!  Today’s quote is from Eric Schmidt, Chairman of Google’s parent company Alphabet.  This quote comes from a podcast he did recently with Reid Hoffman, the founder of Linkedin.  You can hear their full conversation here: https://www.entrepreneur.com/topic/masters-of-scale

In their conversation Eric outlined his belief that making quick decisions and acting fast is essential to the success of any company.  Eric told a fascinating story about how he internalized this lesson in stark terms while taking flying lessons.  When learning to fly, the instructors would constantly tell the students: “decide, decide, decide.”  While flying, deciding is a matter of life or death.  Indecision can lead to catastrophe.  The need to make a decision, and deal with the consequences is very clear from the cockpit of a plane.

In General Stanley McChrystal’s book: Team of Teams he tells a story from 1978 of United Flight 173 which crashed after it ran out of fuel.  The experienced flight crew circled the Portland airport assessing their manuals & debating possible solutions to a relatively minor problem.  As a group, and in conjunction with air traffic control, they calmly discussed the solution for over an hour.  During this time, they lost track of a more pressing variable: fuel level.

Interestingly, Eric first started flying on the advice of a friend who recommended he find a hobby that allowed him to completely detach from work.  Flying certainly fit the bill.  There wasn’t a whole lot of time to think about work problems while in the sky making life & death decisions.

Eric has been able to take this message and put it to work for one of the world’s largest companies.  Having an organization prioritized on quick decision making has allowed Google to continually innovate as it has grown to its’ immense size.

In organizations of any size, it is very easy to get caught up in “paralysis by analysis.” Every decision a group or team makes has consequences and possible negative outcomes.  The key is to accept the inherent risk in making a decision and move forward.  The benefit of moving quickly will outweigh the negative of any mistakes you make.

This way of thinking does seem somewhat counterintuitive.  How many times have you heard the negative expression “ready, shoot, aim?”  Or, heard it said that someone “leads with their gut?”  Quick decision making is often associated with recklessness.  I think the key message here is not a statement about your decision-making process, but instead about the need to conduct your process quickly.  By all means do the research, get a wide range of opinions, test on a small scale, etc.  But, at the end of the of a quick process – make a call.  The limbo of being stuck is much more detrimental to the team than the consequences of a wrong decision.

As always, I am a firm believer that wisdom like this is beneficial to managers at all levels of an organization.  All of us need to do our part to outline what decisions need to be made and then be ready to make them quickly.

Have a great week –  and remember – “decide, decide, decide!”

Here is a link to Stanley McChrystal’s book: https://www.amazon.com/Team-Teams-Rules-Engagement-Complex/dp/1591847486/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1497873389&sr=8-1&keywords=team+of+teams