Dilemma of a decision maker

There are no cookie-cutter answers when posed to top leaders who have accomplished the position they today are, most of the success stories are told after they have reached the peak … there is no one leader I have met so far in the last four decades right from my early days of infancy who can predict the outcome of an action to the path of success…

Nonetheless… one thing common I have noticed reading the autobiography of most admired leaders across the world is they knew when to move out … they knew where to stop… they knew when to say no… similar to a good leader is a gambler who knows when to get out of the table when he is on a winning streak…

This is an anecdote I remember right from my early college days… which our professor echoed time and again and emphasised on when exactly one should get out of a situation good or bad…

Human Beings and frogs are the two creatures in nature carrying tremendous power to adapt… Put a frog in a vessel of water and start heating the water...as the temperature of the water rises, the frog is able to adjust its body temperature accordingly...

The frog keeps on adjusting with increase in temperature... Just when the water is about to reach boiling point, the frog is not able to adjust anymore and at that point the frog decides to jump out...

The frog tries to jump but is unable to do so, because it lost all its strength in adjusting with the water temperature... Very soon the frog dies.

What killed the frog ?

Many of us would say the boiling water... and the truth is what killed the frog was its own inability to decide when it had to jump out... we all need to adjust with people and situations, but we need to be sure when we need to adjust and when we need to decide it’s time to when to jump...

The decision making process tends to generate dogmatism … Leaders with superiority often overpower their peer group and the very charisma they carry coupled with biases in making decision and overlooking the facts either delays the decisions or end up making wrong decisions and pay the price for it… fall back and read the history they are filled with consequences bared  and suffered because of delayed decisions… the history of mankind is filled with many examples where monarchs and top leaders have delayed decisions which are catastrophic.

Just like the most fertile soil does not necessarily produce the most abundant harvest the most experienced need not be the best decision makers … the problem is they often delay the decisions especially in the corporate world that I am exposed to have seen the best of the leaders in the top management sitting on matters long enough that the time flies and the opportunity lost… and then the blame game and downstream corrective actions start… the question is why did you sleep over the matter so long without making any decision…

If I fall back and look at the leaders I have worked with in the corporate world between 1999 and 2014… one very common observation is the leadership values seemed to apply in good times when the economy was blooming and the world was optimistic on India reporting a double digit GDP, but all these values seem to dwindle or even disappear during stress post Lehman issue…

I have seen the best of the leaders under stress loosing long term focus and the temporary problem overpowers the senses and the very human nature filled with interference and insecurities takes over… no matter how resilient one is the environment acts such that the leader is unable to give up or move on and goes on taking decisions thru his gut and not the facts supporting which often blow the problem out of proportion.

Another very common issues one ends up adding cycle time to the decision making process is lack of communication, what I have seen in a decade long experience is people tend to communicate less during bad times, when in actuality, they need to communicate even more…, this fallacy leads to grapevine and gossips tend to picture themselves as facts making the employees take decisions which otherwise with sound communication and clarity wouldn’t have…. I have seen fear and greed dominating the human behavior forcing one in a see-saw journey of decision making…

Wait for something good to happen, a very funny things but yes, that’s true… many organizations wait for an economic and business turnaround and wait for quite long a time to make decisions which should be actually other way round… as a leader one should be making sound decisions during bad times so that the opportunity can be grabbed by both hands during good times…

Decision making is one of the remarkable qualities what leaders are identified possessing that sets them apart from others, the decision made may be bad or good… what is more important is to make one…. delaying making decision will attract an end to the person similar to the frog in the boiling vessel