Is your indecisiveness holding you hostage?

I have been blogging for over ten years now.  I’ve garnered a loyal audience, but nothing like the readership I got recently when I wrote about indecision.  Clearly this is a hot topic as over 2,000 readers stopped by to read what I had to say, which leads me to ask why?

Why is it that indecision is epidemic in our culture?  My first conclusion is that perhaps we just have too many choices.  “Back in the day” we were much more limited in what we could pursue as a career, for example.  At the risk of aging myself, when I left high school, you could be a nurse, teacher or secretary, that was it.  Today the options are endless.

But I suspect the more underlying problem is fear.  Fear of making the wrong decision . Fear of making mistakes.  Fear of failure.  And maybe even fear of success. So many of us strive for perfection, even when we know deep down it doesn’t exist.  So we wait until we think it is a sure thing before we make the final decision.  But if you wait too long, it could be too late and you miss out on an exciting opportunity.

Perhaps because I am an entrepreneur, I am more comfortable with risk.  I am used to ambiguity, as it goes with the territory.  So making a decision does not paralyze me.  Right now in fact I am poised to embark on a new venture which will shake things up.  Am I nervous?  You bet.  Am I worried it will bomb? Yup.  Will I be on a steep learning curve?  Yes.  But is this going to stop me?  No.  I get excited at the potential and I am building in time to plan.  This is not something that is going to happen overnight.

For me, staying still or with the status quo is never an option.  Perhaps it should be, but I want to grow and evolve personally and professionally, and sometimes that can get messy.  I need to be prepared for the worse case scenario, but at the same time have the faith and confidence that this will work.

In my original blog I spoke about how indecision was a decision in itself.  Sometimes in order to move forward we have to choose. Perhaps as a society we have started to overthink things instead of listening to our intuition.  It does in fairness, help if you have done some self-awareness work, in that you know and understand your strengths, weaknesses and foibles.  Being in tune with your values and your “code of ethics” can also help point you in the right direction.

If you are faced with some tough decisions, ask yourself what is the worst thing that could happen if I do A or B?  Think through what you could do to soften a bad landing. But I encourage you – make a decision – move ahead.  Nothing is carved in stone. If it doesn’t work, learn from it and move on. 

Just don’t sit there, literally stuck in the mud.  Break free from the indecision that is holding you hostage.  You deserve better.

Wrong decisions are they just mistakes, or something more?

Photo courtesy of  Stuart Miles, Freedigitalphotos.net

 I recently read a blog in which the writer was exploring the topic of the wrong decisions we can make, but how we need to make them; otherwise we’d be stuck and too scared to take a risk.

It started me thinking.  In her blog she was more talking about the decision to take a job or not; to start a business or not, and she saw them as mistakes when you make the wrong choice.

Somehow a mistake implies something much smaller than a wrong decision.  A mistake is choosing to attend an event that didn’t meet your needs.  A mistake is forgetting to order supplies when you are running low.  A mistake is posting a blog before proof-reading it.  A wrong decision, on the other hand, in my opinion, has much deeper repercussions.

Like everyone I’ve made my share of mistakes but I prefer to think of them as lessons I needed to learn, albeit the hard way.  The key is to learn the lesson, reflect and not repeat it.  Trust me, there’s always fresh opportunities for you to make mistakes.

But when I reflect back on the wrong decisions I’ve made – they have been more major, and all revolve around people.  Such as partnering up with the wrong person and discovering after the “honeymoon” period is over that it is a total mismatch and that we don’t share the same values or goals after all.   Or hiring someone who creates chaos within the team, and having to let them go.

Yes, it has been my judgment around people that has led to wrong decisions – (and I used to be in HR.)  The trouble with these wrong decisions is that they are tougher to resolve, to terminate or remedy.  In fact, rarely is there a remedy if it is the wrong fit.  People rarely change their stripes.

But like mistakes, there is always the opportunity to learn and grow from the experience.  For example, over ten years ago I partnered up with someone to run my first business conference.  While the conference was a success, the behind-the-scenes shenanigans made it impossible for us to work together ever again after the conference was over.  

Yet, he did me a favour, as putting on the conference made me realize I didn’t need a partner to make a conference happen.  In fact I would do better on my own, without all the game-playing, ego trips and temper tantrums which were tiresome to say the least.

So sometimes we can make wrong decisions and reach the right outcome. 

What about you?  Have you ever made wrong decisions and then down the road, realized it turned out for the best after all?

Learning from a costly mistake

I was recently interviewed and asked about the top three mistakes I’d made in my business.  Only three I thought, that should be easy.

But one came to mind immediately.  It was in the early days of Company of Women, and we’d decided in our infinite wisdom to run a May Play Day on a Saturday for women in the community.  We booked a hotel, lined up presenters, vendors and designed a neat passport, etc… It all looked pretty.. and fun.

We also decided to advertise in the local paper, and that was the big mistake.  We shelled out $6,000 to be on the back page of the paper – yes, the entire page.  It looked beautiful but we neglected to find out if the women we wanted to attract to the event, ever had time to sit down and read that paper.  Clearly they didn’t, because the turnout was low.

Those that came had a wonderful time, but the end result was disappointing.  We learned several important lessons from this mistake –

1.              Stick to what you do and know best.  We did a relatively good job of reaching women business owners, but with members of the community – we had a ways to go.

2.              Do your homework before making a big advertising spend. Check whether your target audience read or get the advertising format you are using. Now today it would be easier with social media, but not back them.

3.              Women don’t always want to play on Saturdays. Women business owners tend to be protective of their weekends. They want to spend them with their families, and Saturdays are usually the day for chores, not coming out to play.

4.              Don’t run before you can walk.   We leapt from evening dinners once a month to this all day, Saturday event.  No one really knew us. We had no history of putting on this type of event. No track record.

5.              It’s a lot of work.  The actual event itself was labour intensive.  We were exhausted at the end of the day, and when we barely covered our costs, we learned the hard way, that it wasn’t worth all the effort.

6.              The first time is always the hardest.  That’s how you learn and certainly with other events we have put on, the second year was way better.  But we were burned, and didn’t go there again.

The key with mistakes is to learn from them and move on.