Off Ramps

Watching an interview yesterday with Vice President Joe Biden on a trip to Iraq brought back memories of my own experiences there in 2004-2005. I had the opportunity to be there during their first election in January 2005 and participated in the planning to make sure it went off as safely as possible. That planning went pretty slowly, as it was hard to get the Iraqis to make decisions; instead, they wanted to talk about things a lot, then go off and consider them, then have another meeting about the same thing, and so on and so on. A British Royal Army colonel with whom I worked made a comment that has stuck with me, and that has led me to move forward on decisions when I've felt like we can't get something done.

As we had trouble getting decisions made, this colonel said "Imagine you're driving down a highway and you're passing different off ramps. As you pass each one, that exit is no longer an option. Time is like that highway; the longer you go on, the fewer options you have. If you have a security plan that will take three weeks to implement, and you wait until two weeks before the event, well, that three week plan isn't an option anymore." Letting time go by without making a decision reduces the options available to you, so if you want to have more choices available to you, you need to be willing to make a decision sooner rather than later.

This is just as true for you and your Creatives as it was for us in Iraq. If you aren't willing to make a decision, you end up reducing your options as time goes by. In a sense, failing to make a decision sort of helps make the final decision by reducing your choices, but that may not be the kind of help you want since it may mean that some really good ideas are no longer possible. This isn't to say you should rush into a decision without thinking carefully about it; the idea that "doing something good now is better than doing something great when it's too late" sometimes leads people to rush into less than optimal choices when in fact they had time to do it right. But if you aren't willing to make a decision, if you're too afraid of making the wrong one, then some of those great ideas you have will never have a chance to get implemented.

So be willing to make a decision and stand by it. Be confident in your decision making by being thoughtful about collecting information and setting aside time to give it serious thought, so you feel comfortable that you've made the best decision you can within the time you have available.

Try not to drive past too many off ramps, or you might reach the end of the road with no place left to go.