The Hidden Power Of Decision Pacing.
Edition #180
Introduction
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Take a journey to www.contraminds.com. Listen and watch some great minds talking to us about their journey of discovery of what went into making them craftsmen of their profession, to drive peak performance.
4 Traits Of The Most Successful Founders| How To Hunt Talent Like A Pro|Where All Founders Go Wrong.
Too Long Distance Didn’t Listen VC has an article from a podcast conversation where Eléonore Crespo, Co-Founder and Co-CEO of Pigment, shared her experiences about entrepreneurship, what it takes to build a startup, finding a team, and running a company with Harry Stebbings, Founder of 20VC.
Startups, entrepreneurship, and, most importantly, working in a startup as an employee are not easy. Often, these challenges get buried under successful headlines and multi-billion-dollar exits. Very few talk about what it takes to get there. This is also true of any job or responsibility that you take up and finally accomplish, even in a company. Just that the degree of difficulty is a lot higher in entrepreneurship or startups. But the fundamental principles don’t change - hard work, keen eye for talent, and heavy lifting to be done to achieve desired outcomes seem to be a common thread across both.
Here are some powerful takeaways for you to absorb and think about:
“I show candidates a deck listing all the hard things they’ll face. Anyone fixated on titles and politics naturally filters themselves out.”
“Seize top talent at unexpected moments. Move swiftly when you spot greatness.”
“Kill ego early to protect your culture. Politics and fancy titles are red flags.”
“Optimize for runway and strategic partners, not short-term dilution fears.”
“When there is a crisis, it’s time to invest. Let’s go. Because your competitors cannot invest right now.”
“CEOs constantly risk acting either too fast or agonizingly slow at critical moments.”
“I had 3 surgeries. That’s when I knew I had to become a founder.”
“Your co-founder is your most important hire. Go full espionage mode.”
Read the entire article here.
Why Universities Need To Be Marketable Brands.
Burzeen Bathena is the Marketing Director at NMIMS, one of the top-ranking Indian educational institutions based in Mumbai, India.
Burzeen shared his perspective and experiences in this conversation on many of the following questions, amongst others:
What will it take for Indian educational institutions to become global brands?
Do educational institutions need marketing at all?
How is building an education brand different and tougher from that of marketing any product or service?
Will edtech kill universities?
You can also listen to this episode on:
Apple Podcast | Amazon Music |YouTube
This 64-Year-Old Famous Author's Life Advice Will Break Your Heart - Seth Godin.
Seth Godin is an entrepreneur, best-selling author, and speaker. He was one of the early proponents of ‘Permission Marketing’, which became a legendary idea and concept for the entire marketing community across the world. He is close to completing 10,000 posts on his blog!
In this conversation, he speaks to Sprouht and shares some of his life experiences and advice. His ideas and thoughts are worth their weight in gold:
“Wishes are good, Goals are better.”
“Strategy is the hard work we do before the hard work.”
“You have to fail enough, just to play again.”
“The only way to do creative work is to say ‘This will not work.’ ”
“There is plenty of feedback from the real world, and you need to decide from who to pick it from.”
“Ask yourself one simple question: what are you afraid of?”
“You don’t need more time, you need to decide.”
You can click on the above link and watch the video.
The Hidden Power Of Decision Pacing.
One of the ideas that Elenore Crespo spoke about was the importance and the need for leaders to understand the value of decision pacing.
Elenore makes a very intuitive and powerful observation where she mentions, “No one admits how brutally hard it is knowing exactly when to slow down decisions. CEOs constantly risk acting either too fast or agonizingly slow at critical moments.” The more you think about decision pacing, it seems extremely valuable, and each one of us needs to develop this skill as a part of the entire stack of leadership attributes that one needs.
Whenever we read, discuss or think about decision making, there is a lot discussed and written about how leaders need to make decisions quickly, how to take faster and better decisions, how to make rapid decisions, etc. There is a huge tendency to overvalue speed when it comes to making decisions. Also, there is very little discussion around the importance and value of pacing your decisions.
What does decision pacing really mean?
It’s been a long-held perception that if you want to be a good and successful leader, you need to be quick, agile, and fast to make decisions. However, not all decisions need to be taken at speed and at a rapid pace as it is made out to be. Also, not all decisions need to be taken slowly, too. If you want to be an ‘impactful’ leader, you should know how to set the tempo and pace. This is the exact nuance of decision pacing. Poor decision pacing has ‘real human consequences’ at the workplace as it can suck people’s energy reserves and deplete them completely.
In fact, the best athletes and sportspeople know how to pace their run or the game they play. What’s amazing about them is that they don’t start with the objective of finishing first, but they know when to speed up, when to slow down and when to move out of the way! The legendary tennis player Roger Federer says, “I only won 54% of the points that I have ever played in my career.” This mental attitude gives these sportspeople the right amount of energy at different moments, and also gives them the impetus and thrust just when needed to emerge as a winner!
Similarly, when you want to take decisions, by moving too fast, you can end up with wrong judgments and poor calls, as you need to take decisions with limited data and information in a hurry. It may be a good idea to pause for sometime and revisit the facts again, look at potential upsides and downsides, consider multiple perspectives and their implications, and then take the decision. You are not potentially slowing down the decision, but pacing your decision with a ‘Pause and Thought’.
Decision pacing also allows you to avoid jumping to conclusions too quickly, stops you from having a short-term view, and reduces any bias that may creep in while making the decision. Similarly, decision pacing is not only about ‘moderating the speed of decision making’ but in some cases ‘accelerating the speed of decision making’. Many of us tend to slow down our decision-making or delay it as we fear making a mistake or want to refrain from making mistakes, have a poor capability to handle the risk of failure, fear loss of reputation, seek perfect and complete information, are not comfortable with uncertainty, and want to stay within the ‘comfort zone.’ Slow decisions tend to stifle people’s confidence and their ability to have an innovative mindset. Like an athlete, you need to have the right balance of sprint(speed) and marathon(cruise) when taking decisions. Pacing your decision helps you take the focus away from the ‘decision moment’ to a zone of ‘decision momentum’ - the momentum it can or must create after you take the decision.
When you practice decision pacing as a leader, you manage not just your own but your team’s energy cycles better, balance their cognitive load and also helps you take advantage of people’s circadian rhythms.
Some of the lessons we learnt from this week’s mission:
Learn to pace your decisions.
Goals measure progress, while wishes are just a ‘Statement of Intent’
For businesses, a crisis can be the best time to invest.