In business we tend to overanalyze a situation because we’re afraid to make the wrong decision. Everyone is familiar with the term ‘paralysis by analysis.’ A different take on decision making comes from my friend, Ross Bentley. Ross is a race driver coach and an accomplished former racer himself. How accomplished? He raced Indy cars for a year and a half, won a championship racing for the factory BMW team in the U.S. and spent a year with Ferrari’s factory sports car team. Now he helps other drivers be better.
He has written a series of Speed Secret books and publishes a weekly newsletter on racing driving skills. The title of my missive, “Make a Decision and Then Make That Decision the Right One,” comes from one of Ross’s weekly newsletters. Here’s an excerpt, used with permission:
My philosophy on decision making is this: Make the decision, and then make it right. The best racers follow this approach, as do the most successful non-racers I’ve seen.
Most passes on a track that end up with car-to-car contact were due to a driver hesitating, and not committing to make the decision to pass the right one.
There’s power in commitment, especially when it comes to decisions, especially when it comes to passing another car on a track. When you make the commitment to making a pass, your mindset changes. And when you have the “I’m going to pass” mindset, things happen. When you don’t have that mindset, you’re more likely to hesitate, second guess, and end up with a result you don’t want.
Just to be clear here, I’m mostly talking about competitive driving situations. If you’re in a non-competitive track driving event, the decision-making philosophy is a little different: If in doubt, don’t. But actually, that’s not so different, after all. You’re still making a decision–in this case, if there’s any doubt, don’t do it–and you still need to commit to it.
Practice making a decision and then doing whatever it takes to make that decision work, whatever you need to do to make it the right decision.
In business, our decisions are much slower than on a racetrack but the same idea applies. Make a decision and then make that decision the right one. We’re talking about commitment in both cases, once the decision has been made. The decision making process is also similar:
Of course, this all takes place in seconds or even fractions of a second for a racer while for a business person has a much longer timeframe. Often that timeframe is too long; we need to commit to a decision and get on with it.
Make your decision and then commit to making that decision the right decision. And if you’d like to subscribe to Ross Bentley’s blog, go to: http://speedsecretsweekly.com/
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