Even a one-liner can ease paralysis. The scrappy Savings & Loans Credit Union in Adelaide, Australia, has an internal strategic motto: "We don't want to be first but we sure as hell don't want to be third." The strategy is to stand back and let the first mover take the risk and grab the glory of innovation, then come in right behind and make a copy that's crisper than the original. The lessons for employees are clear. Constantly scan the environment for good ideas. Don't be first, be best. Look for new employees who are good, quick executors, not creative pioneers. And reserve the incentives for people who are improvers, not inventors.
A simple strategy can resolve decision paralysis. And it doesn't have to be simpleminded to do the trick.
Read more Made to Stick columns
Dan Heath and Chip Heath are the best- selling authors of Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die. If you've devised a simple strategy for your company, tell us.
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Recent Comments | 11 Total
March 25, 2008 at 12:58pm by Mark Zorro
Cool, it is so easy to run ahead of ourselves. The benefits alluded in this article are way beyond paralysis but I guess the authors are practicing what they are preaching and containing the theme around indecision. The ability that so many people look for in high level talent is the ability to zoom in and zoom out and I recognize that is not a nature thing but a nurture thing that we can all learn via eliminating distraction and removing the fat around attention. It is so easy to learn to do the zoom out well (diverge) and then completely foul up as one converges. This piece is great because it aligns with one of my core objectives that I seek here, which is to examine the nature of my own personal concentration. Less is more is a principle something I instinctively know but habitually break. That innate ability to focus the mind on what's important does have a lot to do with simplicity and the more one focuses on it, the more I realize how I can easily be led into unnecessary complicated answers or embellished solutions, when the least tried are the simple and elegant answers. Simplicity requires elegance and the ability to not get lost in the illusionary role of being a clever clog. We most do that when we are unclear about the collective goal of what everyone is aiming to pull around on or at least the our own goals because we also live a life that is beyond the work organization - and what we do in that life informs and strengthens what we do in the organizational setting, in that regard this isn't something that is going to sit as an aside in my consciousness, value-based concentration is something that I want to establish as a core principle in my own life......M.
June 15, 2008 at 5:57am by Deborah Rothman
As a mediator, I so frequently see what happens between the company and the employee when management does not adequately clarify its expectations. Everyone feels betrayed, frustrated and angry, and the resources and energy expended to resolve the ensuing problems far outweigh what it would have taken to prevent the conflict/blow-up/litigation in the first place.