Daily Inspiration: Leadership Paralysis – “If you can’t make a simple decision you’ll never master a complex future!”

“If you can’t make a simple decision you’ll never master a complex future!” – Futurist Jim Carroll

One of the more fascinating aspects of my career is that I am often invited to come in to share my insight on the leadership issues that matter today. Often I am told that the organization that has contacted me has a slow, bureaucratic structure and that they need a keynote that features a rousing call to action – they need insight on fast-moving trends and a message that as a slow-moving organization, they need to learn to make fast decisions.

And then they can’t make a decision on whether to book me or not.

I try hard not to laugh. I mean, if they can’t make a decision on their need to learn to make fast decisions, how can they ever expect to get to the future?

This is right up there in the annals of my fascinating career with the times that both VISA and American Express booked me to come in for a leadership talk on how fast-moving disruptors (i.e. Stripe and PayPal) were changing the payment industry. Both told me of their need to confront their ‘boat anchors’ – their slow-moving decision-making process which did not allow them to come up with potential competitive concepts. But then both had to pay my contract deposit using PayPal and Stripe because they couldn’t process the payment fast enough through their internal systems! It is to laugh – but I digress!

Why can’t organizations make decisions? Analysis paralysis, aggressive indecision, death by committee, complacency, denial, too many layers, not enough fast-moving decision-makers, risk aversion – the list is as long as it gets. But one thing is clear – this mindset causes extreme damage to organizations over the long run. There is no doubt that we all live and work in a fast-moving world, and if we can’t master the simple things, we don’t stand a chance on the complex things.

I can often assess, in the first few minutes of an exploratory call with a potential client, whether they are going to move forward or not. When the outreach happens through a low-level functionary, I quickly figure out that any type of decision-making process will have to move through multiple different levels of hierarchy, layers of dysfunction, and structures of slowness. If it is a senior executive, a decision maker, or an authority with a need to move fast, I can tell that things are going to happen.

There is no reason in today’s day and age that organizations should be encumbered by the slow structure of yesterday, and yet, it still happens all too often. And the impact of this type of thing is clear – in a world in which the future belongs to those who are fast, the slow will never thrive, and indeed, might not survive.

Make decisions.

Do it now.

Otherwise, the future will make the decision for you, and you might not like the results.