When leading any start-up, particularly a tech one, you will find yourself having to make scores of decisions on a daily basis.
These can be small – prioritisation of tasks, whether or not to meet with someone, which parameters to tweak in your experiments…but they might also be large things. Should I sign this contract? Should I hire this person? Should I invest in this piece of equipment? Should I accept these investment terms?
Taking these decisions, even the small ones, can be difficult, particularly for those of us with scientific backgrounds. We have been trained to not draw hard conclusions without statistically relevant data. But in a start-up, you don’t have that data. It doesn’t exist. Usually, you only find out if you made the right call with the benefit of hindsight. But that’s not much help! Sure, you can learn from your mistakes, but when both time and money are scant, you cannot afford to waste either.
And so we get to our problem: decision paralysis. In other words, delaying a decision to avoid making the wrong one. Just a bit more advice from experts, you think, and I’ll know what to do. Just a bit more scientific data, and I’ll know the correct product development pathway. Just a few more interviews with potential applicants, and I’ll know if this person is right or not for the job.
The problem with this is that not making a decision can be just as bad as making the wrong one. We’ve already said that we cannot afford to waste time or money, but by sometimes not taking decisions at key moments, we inadvertently waste both.
Of course, this does not mean wildly and blindly rushing into every decision. Pros and cons should be considered. Advice should be sought. But ultimately, you must arrive at a decision in a timely manner, even if the decision is “no”.
Often in a start-up, we will have a pretty clear picture of what our final destination looks like. The question is how to get there, and the common mistake is to assume that there is a “correct path” from A (today) to B (our final destination). When we find ourselves at a crossroads, we pause for fear of taking the wrong path; we’re paralysed.
But there isn’t only one correct path. There are usually many. Some may take longer. Some may be harder. Some may indeed lead to dead ends, and yet we find that we can backtrack, or push through the woods to a neighbouring path. And some paths may even lead to a destination different to what we had in mind, but nonetheless a very pleasant destination!
To avoid decision paralysis, we need to accept that we can never truly know all of the consequences of our decisions. We need to be willing to take risks and to be able to take important decisions despite uncertainty.
I always recommend to entrepreneurs: seek advice from experts and people who have done it before, and then make your own decisions.
To have a chance of success, entrepreneurs need to get over the fear of being wrong and accept the fact that they will be heading into the unknown. We must all decide to decide.
Dr George Frodsham is founder and CEO of MediSieve
