Commitment to a Possibility or Hesitancy and Equivocation

This morning I was reminded, yet again, of the wrestling that many executives engage in, in trying to decide between multiple options, each with their own set of costs and benefits. Some executives make what I call the actuary's decision - basically calculate the risk, and choose the least risky.

The first email I opened today was from one of our client's senior executives, "I am have trouble deciding..." followed by reasons, explanations, concerns, and so on, followed by a request for help, "what should I do?".

I understand the wrestling and the hesitancy. And I am, like most humans, not a stranger to either one. Yet when I stop and reflect I notice that this hesitancy is no more than us hovering at what I call, the threshold between the rational mind doing its chattering, and our taking a stand or declaring a commitment.

The rational minds conversations is like this – all variants of hesitancy, equivocation and risk-aversion:

• It’s a lot of money, we can't afford to make a mistake
• What if we decide to go for it and it doesn't work out?
• What's the reaction going to be...? From the Board, investors, share-owners, customers, the media...
• We can't afford a failure
• ...
  

The taking a stand or declaring a commitment conversations is very different. Stand-taking doesn’t ignore the rational mind's conversations, it is just not shaped by them.

The taking a stand or declaring a commitment conversations is like this – all variants of choosing a future with the no-kidding intention of working to make the future real:
This is what I am committed to..., less than that I am not willing to settle for. Not bluff or bravado – just a statement of what’s so.

We will produce X result by Y time, no kidding. (our version of JFK's declaration, "we will put man on the moon and bring him back safely by the end of the decade" - watch his declarative speech).

My encouragement to executives is this, in all that you do, notice your operating model, so that more often you are able to operate from stand and commitment vs. hesitancy, equivocation and risk-aversion.

One model is not good and the other bad, they just have different outcomes. Which model to operate from is a choice. A choice that is best made so as to forward the outcomes we want rather than to avoid a risk you fear.

Which reminds us of Helen Keller, "Life is either a daring adventure or it is nothing".