The consequences of the (In)Decision Making
Lessons I've learned when stumbled upon the Decision Paralysis
When we talk about decision paralysis, we often refer to the inability to make a decision due to overthinking or overanalyzing options. It is commonly associated with the information overload we have access to nowadays. People in front of too many available options may feel stuck and unable to make a decision because of the fear of making the wrong one or missing out on a better alternative.
There are also many other factors, ofter overlapping: perfectionism, lack of confidence or information, but the one I’d like to explore in this post is the fear of making mistakes.
The fear of messing up can be so strong that it stops you from making any decision at all. You may worry about the potential consequences of your choices, leading you to feel paralyzed by the fear of making the wrong decision.
This type of “block” is completely normal at the beginning. Learning to make decisions is a process that takes time and effective strategies. Most importantly, it requires practice and the acceptance that you will make many wrong decisions at different levels.
Although one might think that at a certain point in their career, the skill can be considered acquired, my experience has taught me that there can always be circumstances where it reappears. This can depend on contexts, delicate personal situations, or many other factors. What makes the difference is how we approach the problem.
I would like to share with you one of my experiences where, despite being accustomed to making decisions, decision paralysis negatively impacted both the project we were working on and the team's morale.
😰 When wrong decisions at the beginning lead to a fear of making new decisions
One of the most significant experiences in terms of decision paralysis as a leader is the one I am about to share below.
To meet business needs, my team had to rewrite one of the bounded contexts of the main application from scratch. The current implementation couldn't be easily adapted, so we needed to design a different version to better integrate with a third-party service. We also had to ensure the existing users were migrated to the new version at a certain point. We decided then to start with a proof of concept to learn more about the possible ways to integrate with the third-party service but we didn’t explore properly how to migrate the existing users to the new version.
The request came in after the team's roadmap had already been defined. In attempting to incorporate this project as well, we grossly underestimated its difficulties. The very first mistake was not discussing with management the true complexity of the project and the need to reprioritize roadmap activities.
The second mistake was made immediately afterward: we treated the results of the POC as absolute truth and, fueled by haste, we didn't take a moment to consider all the implications.
Does this sound familiar? I'm not telling an original story that has never happened elsewhere. These are common mistakes in software development. I don’t want to bother you with the whole story but I wanted to give the context in which everything happened.
Returning to the story: some of the assumptions we made at the beginning turned out to be wrong and this led to a cascade effect of reconsiderations and changes that further delayed the project's completion.
The worst consequence, in any case, wasn’t the project's delay, but rather the decision-making paralysis that at a certain point I, and consequently the team, had to face.
Just when we needed to push the most to wrap things up, anxieties began to emerge: worry about making additional mistakes, concern about taking further wrong decisions, and, even worse, postponing the analysis of the most complex scenarios as much as possible out of fear of discovering additional roadblocks.
Does this sound familiar too? I think so. Most of the times the result of this (in)action is the same: delays, frustration, and missed opportunities.
Motivation was at an all-time low, and it was easy to tell from the expressions on everyone's faces during calls. It's easy to analyze it now that the experience is just a memory and realize all the other mistakes I've made, but when you're in the midst of it, it's hard to take a step back and look at the big picture.
Lack of motivation was just one of the consequences we had to deal with. Also the fear to be judged affected the team and this led to a preference for maintaining the status quo rather than taking calculated risks or trying new approaches. From a leadership point of view, instead, I also faced into decreased confidence issues doubting my own abilities and contributions.
🔓 How to get out of the stalemate?
What worked for me to get out of that stalemate? I could say many motivational phrases about how I managed to overcome all this on my own, but the reality is different: external intervention was needed.
In my case, seeking help from outside the team provided fresh perspectives and valuable guidance. This intervention played a crucial role in breaking the cycle of indecision and moving forward.
It didn’t take any extraordinary efforts to bring some order to the project. A little help to revise the plan and, above all, the courage to tackle the most complex scenarios we had been putting off for so long was enough. Once the direction was clear, things became much simpler. The anxiety (and especially the desire) to complete the project as quickly as possible remained until the very last day, mainly because the fear of judgment was always in the air, but things started to move much faster than before.
I learned a lot from this experience, and to avoid making the same mistake, here are a few things I do:
🏋️♂️ Tackle the most complicated scenarios at first. It has become straightforward to detect them: whenever I feel the urge to postpone exploring a particular section, I force myself to start with that one
💡 Encourage team members to make decisions within their scope of authority. Imperfect decisions is way better than no decisions. I found this article on the topic enlightening:
👥🔑 Consequence of the previous one: learn how to delegate decisions to team members. There are different frameworks about delegation and some of them define from 3 to infinite levels of delegation, even though I prefer a simpler approach in which having just 4 levels of delegation is more than enough. A good starting point could be this article: Degrees of Delegation.
While I was writing this article, I attended Luca Sartoni's "Effective Management" workshop (which I highly recommend, BTW), where we explored the RACI matrix, a tool for highlighting roles and responsibilities within the team. I didn’t have a chance to integrate this in the team’s workflow yet but I’ll definitely want to give it a try
⏳ Implement deadlines for decisions to prevent endless deliberation
⏰ Time-boxing to allocate specific periods for discussion and decision-making
🧭 Have a clear idea of the direction of the project and make sure it has shared across the team. The Agile principle “Responding to change over following a plan” does not mean not having a plan at all. It will certainly change over time, and it will be our task to adapt accordingly
🔍 Simplify Choices: Narrow down options to make the decision-making process easier.
There’s also a TedX talk I found very useful on the topic:
TL;DR
Overcoming decision paralysis or analysis paralysis requires awareness, effective strategies, and, if necessary, external support. Remember, it is better to make a decision, even if it is not perfect, than to make no decision at all.
Credits: Illustration 1, Illustration 2, Illustration 3