Stop feeling guilty about making quick decisions!
How long do you take to make decisions for your business? Jeff Cooper believes that you don’t have to take days or months ticking all the right boxes because decisive decision making can benefit your bottom line.
Leaders of medium enterprises have to think quick and generally make tough decisions by ‘going on their gut’. This can often lead to guilt or, more accurately, the concern that the decision made wasn’t given the time or introspect it deserved and could have been the wrong one.
The way business is moving now suggests these quick decisions are actually increasingly working when it comes to the bottom line, and it may be worth re-evaluating their effectiveness in today’s workplace.
The research to back this up comes from a recent study that proves the average CEO of Fortune 500 companies make their decisions in 9 minutes or less, with only 12 per cent of their decisions taking longer than an hour. And when you consider how a lot of these companies started as smaller businesses and toppled some of the big names along the way (think Kodak, Yahoo and Nokia versus Google and Facebook) it pays to look at how this affects the way their business is run.
First of all, medium sized businesses are not usually afforded the luxury of the in-depth reviews, management consultants, huge resources and reporting which large corporations revel in. Forgetting the red tape these create to slow down the decision making process, what they are actually doing is creating a safety net of box-ticking, avoiding risk and playing it safe, which all work to stifle innovation.
In contrast, the medium enterprises have to keep moving – constantly think on their feet and push things out the door quicker; in essence, take calculated risks. With us all operating in an environment where ideas are currency, this leads to innovation, which leads to big leaps forward and better margins.
Of course, it’s not as simple as quick decisions meaning better results. You still need the correct research, understanding of the market and timing to succeed but the fact is that in this new ‘entrepreneurial age’ you needn’t feel like copying the processes of the big players is always the correct way to go. As medium business owners you are empowered to act like these new successful CEOs and follow the instinct which got them, and you, where you currently are.
Secondly, and more obviously, are the cost cuts associated with quicker decisions. Think about how much time and money could be saved if resources were poured into R&D rather than expensive board meetings and focus groups.
This isn’t just rhetoric either, it’s actually backed up by science. If you have a look at the way the brain functions, the majority of information is processed by our emotional area and then a small part, around 4 per cent, is passed along to our rational area for processing. What this means is that our emotional brain is a lot more powerful and discerning than the rational, yet we don’t really trust it. It is actually there for us to make the emotionally correct decision and then rationally justify it – so use it!
As a marketing consultancy who work with some of the country’s fastest growing medium businesses, we’ve been in a position to view the shift from size being better to moving quick being better, particularly now we’re in a constantly shifting digital age, and the catalyst for this has been quick decisions.
We’ve put this theory into practice by creating free events where we show ourselves in action, rather than just telling people why we should be used. Our monthly ‘Stump the Strategist’ events promise to solve medium enterprise marketing issues live on stage in 9 minutes flat.
We use this format to shake up the marketing agency model, which usually takes 6 months to deliver a result, and build trust and integrity that we can get things done to a high standard quickly.
So the next time you are faced with a decision that needs to be made quickly, don’t feel guilty about making it and sending it out the door. Making quick decisions has been working for a lot of companies lately and makes sense when you think about it in terms of creating innovation and cutting out red tape. Follow your gut and you may soon find yourself on the Fortune 500 list as well.
Stump the Strategists are free monthly events held in the Sydney CBD. To register your interest please visit www.stumpthestrategist.com or visit our YouTube channel to see videos of past events.
Jeff Cooper is the General Manager of Step Change Marketing, a consultancy that focuses on clients who are looking for a Step Change. For this reason we work with some of Australia’s fastest growing and most ambitious medium sized enterprises.
Jeff Cooper is a Board Member of Business Excellence Australia, the not-for-profit peak body for Excellence in Australia, and world leading CultureTech startup, Appellon. His interest in culture comes from running businesses where he admits he didn’t always get it right, and the scars from 15 years consulting in the corporate world.
Danielle Partyka
June 6, 2012 at 12:20 am
Excellent article! I have
Excellent article! I have seen your quick decisions from ‘Stump the Strategist’ add value to all types of organizations. Maybe we should all be brave and follow the “Step Change” way.
Darren Woolley
May 30, 2012 at 10:50 am
Hi Jeff, good post and timely
Hi Jeff, good post and timely reminder that the quality of the outputs of the human brain do not depend on time. Often the idea or solution comes in the blink of an eye. Malcolm Gladwell’s “Blink” has an excellent set of stories to support this. In a world that is changing at click speed, the mantra is adapt or die and those businesses that take too much time with analysis paralysis will find themselves as dead at the dodo.