Making perfect decisions is overrated.
When founders face tough business decisions, it’s more important for them to make a good decision quickly than it is to find a flawless solution. Facebook FB -3.24% got to where it is today by moving fast and breaking things. Investors like that approach. Fred Wilson believes founders should be action-oriented if they want to be successful.
On the flip side, Y Combinator’s Paul Graham has written that founders can easily kill their startups by moving too slow.
Dave Girouard, CEO of Upstart and former president of Google GOOG -1.41% Enterprise Apps, has a method you should adopt: Embed speed into your company’s culture. “All else being equal, the fastest company in any market will win,” he said.
That’s why I advocate reviewing data, deciding quickly, and then focusing on execution.
A word of caution before speed
Different problems require different amounts of thinking. You want to read a book on management theory. Do you go with something from Peter Drucker or Andy Grove? This choice requires zero brain cycles. Pick whichever book is on top. But should your company integrate with product A or B? That deserves time and may require some meetings. Sometimes you need to take a break to think things through. Wait a day, let your opinions settle, and then move forward.
But for the most part, your decisions shouldn’t take more than 10 minutes.
See also: Why You Shouldn’t Think Twice About Firing an Employee
Data isn’t enough
It’s unlikely you’ll get enough meaningful data to make the perfect decision. But that’s okay. Using data is one important way to view a problem, but on its own, it isn’t sufficient. Good data does not guarantee good decisions.
In marketing, you determine the winner of an A/B test through statistical significance. It’s hard to apply the same approach to most choices. When you’re faced with decisions that data won’t solve, it’s important to understand that any decision is better than no decision.
Here’s what the leaders I trust most had to say about making tough decisions:
Trust your gut
Alberta School of Business researcher Sarah Moore and her colleagues found that trusting your gut leads you to make decisions that ultimately help in achieving long-term goals.
Linda Yuan, general manager at Roomi and former VC, suggests, “In stressful times, I’ve found that my first reaction is often correct. Mulling over my decision is actually my brain’s way of trying to convince myself I’m wrong. If I haven’t thought of every single possibility, how could I be 100% sure? In my experience, trusting my instincts has been the hardest lesson to learn.”
Linda is right. You should trust your instincts because of pattern recognition.
Rely on past experiences
Does this decision feel familiar? What did you do last time? Did it work? This process is called pattern recognition, and it should factor heavily into your thought process.
Michael Affronti, vice president of product at ThinkingPhones, told me, “I’ve been building enterprise software for 14 years, and I rely heavily on pattern-matching against my past experiences and decisions to make business decisions. Using real examples from my past helps me confidently trust my gut, and more importantly, provides context to my team around why and how I made my decision.”
Tami Reiss, founder of Cyrus Innovation, says, “I trust my gut most when I’ve had a similar experience before. If it’s a totally new situation, I’ll review a little more data to inform my intuition. In the end, generally the worst decision is no decision. I take the what’s-the-worst-that-can-happen approach, trust my gut, and move on.”
Founders don’t need to make perfect decisions to build a world–class company. And it’s okay to make incorrect decisions. But great founders follow their instincts, set intelligent plans, and can adjust their plans midstream.
Instead of focusing all of your time on making the perfect choice, trust your gut, then execute. Just follow the advice of General George Patton: “A good plan, violently executed now, is better than a perfect plan next week.”
Posted By: Adam Rubinstein
Saturday, December 12th 2015 at 2:41PM
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