When it comes to business and leadership, we are so often led to believe there is no greater sin than to be indecisive.
A friend of mine recently sheepishly told me how they commonly received feedback from those around them at work that they weren’t direct enough with their decisions, and that they were often teased for so often being a ‘fence-sitter’. This same person is a creative problem solver, has an enviable EQ, and is diligent in their work. And yet, the way in which they shamefully revealed their lack of decision-making was akin to someone reluctantly divulging that they had been misappropriating company money to spend on Pokémon cards.
People often cite a number of reasons for struggling with decisions. Fears of being held accountable, or psychological traps such as imposter syndrome and perfectionism are commonplace. Yet decision-making is heralded as an essential quality among managers and leaders. We are often taught to follow a company’s vision and mission unwaveringly. Peter Drucker’s seminal Harvard Business Review article What Makes an Effective Executive focuses almost entirely on the decision-making process.
The oft-used analogy of a leader ‘steering a ship’ is used so ubiquitously that we fail to question whether it is the ideal trait of a manager, and indeed whether the analogy is even apt at all for business success.
What if good business leadership is actually fundamentally about being indecisive? About being an expert in analysing, evaluating, and seeing a fuller picture? What if we championed those who were ready to change their mind too?
To be, or not to be? Either way, it’s best not to rush to a decision.
Solutions are never black and white
What makes decision-making so damn challenging is that oftentimes answers cannot be found. We like to think that there are concrete answers, but so often there aren’t. The human brain is wired in a way that it likes to live in the black or the white. To view issues as dichotomous. To sit on one side of the fence or another. Daniel Kahneman’s lifetime body of work which is characterised by System 1 and System 2 thinking is so apt at demonstrating this.
Our system 1 brain makes snap decisions. According to the work of Professor Manfred Zimmermann, our brains process 11 million bits of unconscious information a second. They process 40-50 bits of information consciously per second. Most of this is happening without us thinking about it. Our system 1 brain is handling it all for us with minimal input from us consciously.
Can you confidently make decisions without being prone to biases?
By its very nature, however, the System 1 brain doesn’t want to view the world in any shades other than black and white. It doesn’t think with any real depth about… well, anything. It’s the part of the brain that answers ‘4’ to the question “what’s 2+2?” It’s the part that says “Coca-Cola” when I ask you to name a soft drink. It’s the part of the brain that tells you immediately that you love salt and vinegar crisps, or that you don’t like olives.
But notice how those questions become steadily more subjective. It’s indisputable that 2+2 = 4. Coca-Cola is a popular brand of soft drink, but it’s not the only one. As for the crisps and the olives – when’s the last time you evaluated what it is you like and dislike about them? And have you just allowed your System 1 brain to run with that idea? It has placed those foods in a binary fashion. Good or bad. Right or wrong. It feels comfortable to do so. It feels easy to not have to analyse and evaluate.
The world wants you to take sides
Whilst our System 1 brains are driving us to rapid decisions, the world is also geared towards this thinking. The deep ponderous thoughts of Greek philosophers of yore have given way to pithy tweets that deride one group and champion another. That claims one political decision to be blasphemy, and another to be gospel.
Don’t think, just identify
Today, we are asked not what we think, but how we identify – as though all of human thought can be distilled into the categories in which we position ourselves. Umair Haque has written extensively on the troubles of identity politics, and how it has derailed the left wing for over a decade. Faced with failing economic policies, populous politics, and the existential threat of climate change, the left has become focused on identity, identity, identity. “Because all those young people being taught that their choice of identities would fix everything, they only effectively cared about themselves. The moral horizons of leftism had shrunk to a kind of terrifying, idiotic narcissism.”
One of the greatest living political philosophers, Francis Fukuyama, has published work on the links between unthinking identity politics, the rise of populism, and the moves towards exclusivity within groups rather than coming together as one.
The right-wing is guilty of this too. From Americans proudly sticking MAGA into their Twitter bios, and clinging like limpets to their pro-gun, anti-abortion stances. They have become fixated on the issues at hand, with no room for discourse despite a trail of children’s bodies in their wake as school shooting after school shooting makes America’s approach to gun control look increasingly deplorable.
Staunch, binary thinking patterns exist on both the left and the right. Attempt to engage in discourse, and both sides will gleefully crucify you for the audacity of asking questions like ‘what if…’ or curiously exploring what someone else has to say. Everything remains black and white. Politically, the fence-sitters are the brave ones – those willing to explore the murky grey.
But I want answers now
All of this is compounded by the speed at which we are expected to find answers now.
Blinkist felt like the early sign of this – it’s a service in which books are summarised in a matter of minutes, so you don’t even need to sit down and dwell in the detail or the nuance. I referenced Daniel Kahneman’s work above – Thinking Fast and Slow was a culmination of over 5 decades of groundbreaking research. The Blinkist version of the book can be listened to in under 30 minutes. We don’t have time to analyse, evaluate, or assimilate information in our minds. Instead, we are simply to absorb and regurgitate.
Let AI do the work
We’re already getting a taster of what the future holds. AI has crashed into anyone who works in the digital sector like a freight train ploughing through your garden fence to announce itself. As humans, we are pondering how we are supposed to keep up – and, for the first time, truly questioning when AI might steal our jobs. However, as AI promises to do the work for us, one can’t help but ponder the damage such an approach might entail. Nuance, curiosity, and discourse give way to solutions at the snap of a finger.
Larry McEnerney leads the University of Chicago’s writing programme. He says that the world’s foremost experts in their fields “deal with very complicated information – lots of subtlety, lots of nuance, lots of sophistication, lots of complexity – and they think at very high levels. They also write. 99% of them write and think at the same time. That is they use their writing process to help themselves to think.” I can’t recommend watching a bit of the video below enough to get a grasp on this process.
But now AI will write for us. We live in a world where AI algorithms are being pushed upon us. But taking Professor McEnerney’s point, if we eschew the writing we also eschew the thinking.
A reframing of indecisiveness
So, let’s bring it back to people who are indecisive. How can they help us in this world where we are expected to know everything, and we are expected to know it faster than ever before?
What if indecisiveness was part of a winning formula? One where we ultimately make better and more rounded decisions? Jana-Maria Hohnsbehn and Iris Schneider are the team behind a paper published by the University of Dresden in 2021 highlighting the superhuman powers of indecisiveness.
They measured how much participants resonated with phrases such as:
Many topics make me feel conflicted
I usually see both the positive as well as the negative side of things
I often experience both sides of an issue pulling on me
I often find that there are pros and cons to everything
I often feel torn between two sides of an issue
Whilst those who related highly to such statements were indeed slower at making decisions, they also showcased dramatically lower levels of bias, more thoughtful reasoning, and ultimately made significantly better decisions.
By running the participants through a series of scenarios, they were able to demonstrate that those with a high degree of indecisiveness approached challenges in open-ended ways, and better empathise with the people at the centre of such problems. Remember how I said that my friend was a creative problem solver and had a great EQ? This goes some way to explaining it.
It’s okay to change your mind
Importantly, when those with high levels of indecisiveness made their decision, they were also more likely to change their minds when new information was presented.
In one scenario, they were told to make a judgment call on an imaginary hire for a company. After choosing whether or not to hire a person, additional info came to light for the participants – some information to support their original decision, and some information that was designed to be contradictory to that decision.
The indecisive folks were ready to swallow their pride and accent that maybe they had made the wrong decision. I’d wager we’ve all worked alongside someone stubborn and prideful around their decisions, refusing to change their mind or adapt. Give me a fence sitter any day.
Be brave: Try not making decisions
Perhaps among the most egregious misrepresentations of the indecisive is that they’re somehow cowardly. That they shy away from big decisions and are therefore lacking in courage and strength of will.
Before we wrap up, let’s put this myth to bed. The fence sitter is the bravest person on your team. They’re the secret weapon in your arsenal that’ll get clarity around decisions. Don’t discount the bravery it takes to not make a decision, and instead to be the one who evaluates, reconsiders, and changes their mind multiple times – in doing so, they are bringing clarity to your mind too.
The fence sitters challenge your views, opinions and beliefs. At the very least, they keep a team thinking rather than irrationally acting based on biases. At their best, however, they are often the ones to reign in the most chaotic, ego-driven, or stubborn members of a team.
I’ve written before on the folly of blindly pushing a dud product with regards to Alan Sugar’s pithy business nonsense, and I believe having a fence sitter around is a good way to help prevent you from falling into such traps. They are not cowardly for not coming to a decision; they speak up against the unbridled managers and cocksure colleagues. One of the bravest things someone can say to their colleagues is “I’m not sure.”
I’m Not Sure
It’s those simple words that take a team that’s in danger of running away with itself to at least considering and evaluating its options. One of the greatest films of the last century, 12 Angry Men, showed exactly that.
Henry Fonda’s Juror #8 – one of cinema’s indecisive superheroes.
In the film, 11 members of a jury quickly fall prey to their biases and assumptions and nearly unanimously convict someone for a crime with little to no effort going into their thinking. The final juror never explicitly states that they believe the defendant is innocent – they simply get the jury to reconsider their verdict of guilty. They get them to go from a decision to “I’m not sure.”
So here’s a challenge to you: next time you say shoulda, woulda, coulda, try to remember you also shouldn’ta, wouldn’ta, couldn’ta.
