 Is there such a thing as too much information when you're trying to make a decision? Stay tuned to find out. Welcome back and congratulations on taking one more step towards becoming one of the great leaders of tomorrow. We've been talking all month about how to become the kind of leaders that have the freedom to make good decisions and the steps we can take to do that. This week we're going to talk about a really important roadblock that keeps many leaders from making the tough decisions they need to make and that's falling victim to analysis paralysis. This occurs when a leader has a decision to make but continues to push off making it. The reason for often given for pushing out the decision is we don't have enough information or we need to study it more but the reality is the leader often just doesn't like the situation or the options available and keeps delaying the decision until a better option presents itself. Sometimes this isn't a big deal but sometimes you can grind everything in an organization to a halt. Now I don't want to give you the idea that it's not important to get all the information available to solving a problem or to study the situation thoroughly before making a decision because that's very important. When I'm talking about analysis paralysis I'm talking about the times where you've already gathered all the information available or done the appropriate studying of the problem but still delay making a decision. We'd all like to have perfect information when we make a decision but most of the time that's just not possible. Sometimes as much as there's a tiny piece of information that would really help break a problem wide open for us that information isn't always available to us. An example from my days in the Air Force is that there was always uncertainty about how an adversary might react if the United States took a specific action. We could never know for 100% certain what the information would be but we still had to go forward and make decisions about the actions we needed to take without having that piece of information. There were times when it made sense to wait and see if we could learn more but there were also times if we didn't make a decision we would miss an important opportunity. This same kind of thing happens in the civilian and business world although the impacts of the lack of decision are usually less severe. It's also important to recognize that none of us want to make a bad decision. It's a very real fear that many of us have at times but we can't overcome that fear by avoiding a decision. We can only face that fear by making the best decisions we can by being thorough and managing the risk of our decisions but we can never expect to be perfect. Here are a few questions we can ask ourselves to see if we're really being prudent in holding off on making a decision or if we may be a victim of analysis paralysis. First, is there a time critical aspect to this decision? Will we miss an important opportunity or somehow face a penalty for not making a decision? Do we have all of the information available? While more info might be nice, is it really possible for us to know the answers we'd like to have? Finally, has the analysis been completed thoroughly and in a logical manner? Are the assumptions, methods, data, and conclusions of the study solid? Is there really more analysis that should be done or do we just not like the answers that the experts have given us? Answering these questions honestly can help us get past some of the fear of making a bad decision and show us if we've really done our due diligence in gathering the information and analysis we need to make a decision. It's okay if we decide to go forward or to hold off on making that decision but by answering these questions we've forced ourselves to consider if we really need more information or analysis or if we're just paralyzed. I want to be really clear that I'm not saying we should rush through making decisions or make decisions without the appropriate information or be careless. What I'm getting at today is that sometimes we reach a point where we've done all of the analysis, studying, and thinking about a problem that we can do and we reach a time to make a decision. Sometimes after all that work the decision is still difficult or unpleasant but making decisions using good judgment is what we're expected to do as leaders. Kicking the can down the road or chasing perfect information that we'll never achieve can cause us to miss key opportunities and prevent us from accomplishing our mission. 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