| Hi 👋,
Progress requires us to take action.
Action requires a decision.
A decision is between at least two options of which one might make us worse off. One option always available is inaction which also is a decision that will most likely make us worse off.
With any decision comes a certain risk, which we can try to mitigate - for large decisions & projects we can even conduct risk management.
Two ideas I want to advocate for:
Idea 1: RISK = THREAT x PROBABILITY
It shows that RISK ≠ THREAT, meaning just because something really bad could happen, without a reasonable likelihood that it will become true, it’s not necessarily something you need to spend energy on mitigating it.
Idea 2: Accountability for indecision
We can’t just hold ourselves (and after that our teams) accountable for outcomes of a decision, we need to hold ourselves accountable for indecision as well as it certainly comes with a cost to our progress. Indecision might even be costlier than a wrong turn.
“The idea that we want to mitigate risk to zero before we act is really common and really costly.”
— General Stanley McChrystal |
