Over the last couple of weeks, I’ve written about the quantity and quality of information that goes into decisions during times of overload and uncertainty. Today’s focus is on the nature of the decision itself.
Two quick reminders:
- Very few decisions are irreversible. How might it help you to see the decision as an experiment rather than written in stone? Taking the next right step, learning from it and course correcting is a more helpful posture in times of rapid change than committing to a long-term path.
A caveat and a tip: You need to stick with a decision long enough to learn from it. And it helps to be explicit about the conditions under which a decision will be revisited. These are usually related to a) new information becoming available that would potentially change the decision and b) after a certain amount of time. Those parameters help you to avoid re-opening decisions too frequently. - Be sure you actually have a decision to make. Often volatility can make us feel unsettled, and we can confuse that feeling for indecision. It helps to be very clear with your team on whether there is a decision to be made, what it is and how soon.
If you are grappling with the soup of feelings that accelerating change can cause, I have two offers for you:
- Send me a message and we’ll send you the recording from our book club from last Friday on thriving in uncertainty. You’ll especially appreciate the live conversation with Gill Deacon about insights from her terrific book, A Love Affair with the Unknown.
- We don’t get a choice about whether we adapt, but we can choose our preferred tools and pathways to get there. An AQai assessment of your adaptability profile (personally or as a team) might be just the snapshot you need to find a more energizing route to becoming more adaptable. Message me for more details.