This is another topic on the decision making process. In this topic I am focussing my attention on Timing on decision making process.

Procrastinators heaven is in delaying the decisions, sometimes it becomes a habit. You will find that some individuals are chronically delaying making decisions. Almost that they want the decisions to automatically take themselves. Usually when someone else takes the decision for them owing to the delay cause by them, it gives them opportunity to stay under the radar and keep cruising or perhaps blame someone else for wrongful decisions.

Sometimes this delay is inevitable, James Cameron waited almost fifteen years to start working on Avatar movie as the technology he wanted to use was not available. That was a conscious choice as the technology required for the movie was not yet ready.

Bill Gross has an interesting TED talk on the topic. Bill Gross researched over 200 companies and found that timing was one the key ingredients for venture success.

Steven Covey’s work, Seven habits of highly effective people talks about importance and urgency in decision making.

At times the delay is caused by journey to build expertise, knowledge or skills. Like hitting a bull’s eye on the target with precision. However at times, when such precision is not required and you need to hit near the bull’s eye only once. Building precise skills may be futile. The benefit of building skills do have a high payoff however the delay caused in decision making might quickly diminish it.

In case of an exploding offer in negotiation or a commercial transaction in a rapidly changing market poor timing may advisedly impact the economic return besides negatively impacting the chain of decisions that follow.

I remember visiting my Dad in the steel foundry with massive Bessemer converter, air is blown through the molten iron and there is a moment where the colour of flame changes when iron turns into steel. That is the time when the right state of iron is reached to start moulding. A delay can negatively impact the quality of alloy and thus negatively impact the economic process. That said the process reached end of its timing ( Obsolescence ) and was replaced with a better process called a basic oxygen process.

Sometimes taking time to make decision, inaction or procrastination is a form of decision itself where one prefers the current state shunning change thus suggesting unpreparedness or unworthiness or inability to take risk. Many businesses have gone belly up as they were unprepared to make the right call at the right time. It’s akin to striking the iron when it is hot.

Kodak once an Empire dwindled very quickly when they did not take a timely decision when the market had shifted.

Hasty or ill prepared decisions do equally result in sub optimal outcome. I am sure you would have encountered scenarios where no matter what the question was the answer was always a quick NO!!

Think carefully when you make decisions, timing is always critical. Untimely decisions indicate poor judgement and may significantly reduce or annul the value of decision.

Best

SBabbar

If you would like to understand the decision making process better in your organisation, Please reach out to me on sbabbar(at)sameerbabbar.com

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License

Procrastinate now or later! Timing in decision making.