Making Better Decisions Faster

In his annual letter to shareholders, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos noted that most businesses make high-quality decisions, but they make them too slowly.  In order to succeed and stay ahead of the completion, Bezos claims that you need to somehow make "high quality, high velocity decisions."  This is easier for new organizations but more difficult for larger and more established companies.  Speed does matter.  But how do you decide quickly and avoid results that don't get to the root of a problem or circumstance?  According to Jesse Sostrin in an HBR blog, high velocity decisions require reflective urgency or the ability to align your best thinking with swift action.

 

Sostrin offers three strategies to practice reflective urgency.  One is to identify the distractions that take away from quality thinking time.  These may include trying to multitask when an important decision requires your undivided attention, agreeing to projects that will gobble up oodles of time with little reward and rushing from one meeting to another with unfinished business left on the table.  Identifying the actions that prevent you from focusing exclusively and selectively on the most important decisions you need to make can help eliminate or mitigate distractions.  Ask yourself this question - when you are stressed or feel there's not enough time in the day to perform effectively, what is the biggest drain on your time?

 

Another impediment to making high velocity decisions is working on tasks and projects that are either easy or likeable.  We all have pet projects that bring us joy.  There's a reason the play is the opposite of work.  We all have responsibilities that are difficult and challenging.  To avoid putting off the difficult tasks, answer this question, "I would like to spend my day working on ____, but I know I should focus on ____."

 

If you are like most company leaders, you can't reduce the demands on your time or attention easily. The bottom line is that there is not one right way to make decisions.  Depending on the nature of the issue involved, you can determine how much thought needs to go into making the decision.  Bezos recommended never using a one-size-fits all decision-making approach. Some decisions are easily reversed.  He also claims that most decisions should be made with somewhere around 70% of the information you wish you had.  If you wait for 90%, in most cases, you won't be acting quickly enough.  Finally, you need to be able to recognize and react quickly when you make the wrong decision such as a bad hire.  If you know how to change course quickly, it most likely will be less costly than you think, and certainly less expensive then being slow.