Chocolate or Ice cream…? McDonalds or Pizza…? Coke or Fresh Fruit Juice …? Life or Death…? Shortcut or Main road…? Drive down or take a walk…? Yes or No…? Hire or No Hire…? Good or Bad...? Buy or Sell...? Invest or Spend...?
We make tons of quick decisions and 90% of them unconsciously and very quickly…often we call them choices; most of them may be correct and most of them may go against us and hem-haw over in agony.
Our choices and decisions predominantly are based on our personality and the way we think, most of them have roots to our decision making skills we picked up subconsciously while we were kids. We choose many actions from our own experience, biases, opinions, memories…
I was talking to a very old friend of mine, and he asked me a funny question… “A company where an employee is currently working does not recognize his/her potential and the same person in another company when hired … is hired for a higher position and gets a pretty good hike… what the current company did not understand about him in past few years… the new company assessed in a 30min interview round and made a decision”….
Few days back I visited my stock broker and he quoted “Listening to others opinions and not trusting yourself - Most traders have failed numerous times. Put your boat in the water - The song goes, "Ships are safest in the harbor but that is not what ships are for…” now everything again boils down the decision, here it is to Buy or Sell a stock that is again an emotion that holds you back, fear and greed…
Here is an anecdote; you would have heard this story in your leadership trainings or in some seminars etc… pretty popular one on Which one will you choose?
A group of children were playing near two railway tracks, one still in use while the other disused. Only one child played on the disused track, the rest on the operational track. The train came, and you were just beside the track interchange. You could make the train change its course to the disused track and saved most of the kids. However, that would also mean the lone child playing by the disused track would be sacrificed. Or would you rather let the train go its way?
Let's take a pause to think what kind of decision we could make................
The first thought that comes to the mind and we might choose to divert the course of the train, and sacrifice only one child. You might think the same way, I guess. Exactly, I thought the same way initially because to save most of the children at the expense of only one child was rational decision most people would make, morally and emotionally. But, have you ever thought that the child choosing to play on the disused track had in fact made the right decision to play at a safe place?
Nevertheless, he had to be sacrificed because of his ignorant friends who chose to play where the danger was.
This kind of dilemma happens around us every day… especially the minority is often sacrificed for the interest of the majority, no matter how foolish or ignorant the majority are, and how farsighted and knowledgeable the minority are.
The child who chose not to play with the rest on the operational track was sidelined. And in the case he was sacrificed.
I was conducting an workshop at Delhi, the audience were members from DGCA (Directorate General of Civil Aviation), AAI (Airport Authority or India) and ATC (Air Traffic Control). We had a very long conversation around this story and every one had his or her own opinion, to add more flavor to the discussion we introduced an additional emotional element …
Option 1: Now imagine the one who is going to change the train has his kid playing on the disused track
Option 2: Now imagine the one who is going to change the train has his kid playing on the active track
Few replied to sacrifice the kid and put the train on the disused track
Few were of the opinion that the choice that kid made to play on the disused track was right, why should he be killed for the ignorance of others
Few blamed that authorities / parents / teachers etc… for allowing the kids to play on the railway track
Few were worried on what would happen to the life of people in the train if we put the train on the disused track
When the above variables were introduced in the story,
Few were of the opinion and said I am not worried of anyone else but my kid…. (Emotion)
One of them said… it’s ok to sacrifice my kid for the sake of others again an Emotional decision.
One of them shared a technology tip that trains should have auto sensors installed
Someone told can we inform the train engine driver to stop the train
One of them told can we rush towards the kids and ask them to get out of the track
We never reached a conclusion; every decision has its own advantage and disadvantage…
While we work with people around us, we will far sure end up with conflicting situations and delay the decision making, sometimes we will get into a deadlock situation, every party involved in the decision making will be equally influential and will have his or her own opinion.
I faced a tough situation too, at some juncture did feel that enough is enough, let me go with the flow and continue with what is happening, any way it’s just my job and after few days I will move on. But my inner conscious did not permit me do this… again a decision dilemma, here is what I love the most, talk to someone when you are in such a situation, I fell back on my Mentor and talked to her and suddenly a spark aroused with two options… I have always noticed this, and you too would have come across, you know the solutions and sometimes due to stress or various other factors the mind simply stops working ... talking to someone helps brush the dust thats settled in....
1. Continue the way we are doing now … find a quick fix so that the operations don’t get stalled
2. Benchmark and understand the best practices across the globe and align the process accordingly per industry best practices…,
While option 2 is the best one to do for all the business process, often we don’t do a benchmarking excercise... for various reasons (time, cost, schedule slip etc...) and the learning from this incidence reinforced to stick to the fundamentals principles of quality… go by the rule book and follow the framework.
Quite often we get into this kind of situations where you don’t know the right process or the wrong process… end of the day we need to deliver the results to our customer… that’s what the customer is looking for… if a quick fix works … go ahead and put the fix in place and then on a long run mature the process and make it more capable.
All that I learnt is … “That what's right isn't always popular... and what's popular isn't always right."
