Stuck. A deadline is looming. You've been collecting data, thrashing through alternatives and getting opinions from your colleagues. Yet the sweet conclusion is eluding you. It looks like another sleepless night.
It doesn't much matter what the decision is about. It could be work related. It could be personal. Sometimes we just don't know what the answer should be when the timer goes off. I've had this happen when hiring, when making product decisions, when making business recommendations, and when making job decisions. It is bad enough that I've got to make a commitment. It is worse that I've got to then justify that commitment with those higher up. And it is even worse that I have to live with that commitment once it has been blessed.
Then I learned the secret of the decision-making equation. A decision is like a mathematical equation. The "answer" on one side of the equation equals the sum of the elements on the other side of the equation. When we start out, the answer is unknown. So, we collect elements. We add them. We subtract them. We multiply them. We divide them. We do everything we can to try to make the equation balance. Even though we don't know the "answer", we do know when that equation finally balances. As we get closer to our deadline, the pressure ratchets up and we get more desperate. We start adding elements (other people's opinions) that often throw our equation further out of whack. What are we to do?
We usually can't make a decision for one simple reason. We don't have all of the information we need.
For instance, in one hiring situation, the interview process had exposed some very conflicting information about one job seeker. When I thought about the positive feedback, I would lean towards hiring the individual. When I thought of the negative feedback, I would lean the other way. And after interviewing a slew of mediocre candidates, I just wanted to get the process over with. Yet, it was impossible to make a decision based on the information at hand. Days of decision paralysis followed.
The recognized that I didn't yet have all of the elements I needed to make the equation balance. However, at this point, I didn't need just any kind of new element. I required very specific information. I started by developing the list of characteristics of the additional information that would help me balance the equation. In this case, I sought out more detail regarding how my candidate reacted in a specific situation. My action plan to gather that information included one more interview with the candidate and a set of targeted questions made to the candidate's references. This approach worked like a charm. Armed with the additional information, the decision was easy.
Our decision equation problems are the same as our potential customer's. The marketer's job is to help them overcome the decision roadblocks they may run up against when evaluating our products. We can do this by anticipating potential roadblocks and objections and creating content, tools, and other mechanisms to navigate them safely to the other side.
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