Analysis Paralysis

Photo by Victoriano Izquierdo on Unsplash

Sometimes when we are faced with two options, we always tend to think that one option will be good and other bad. And human tendency is to take time to analyse and classify the two.

However most often in life, we face options that have their shades of grey rather than black and white .

Many a times the information you would like to have does not exist or you just feel neither of the options are good and you just cannot come up with any other alternative options.

During these times, its natural to get stuck and face what is commonly felt as “Analysis paralysis”.

In many such situations, individuals and organization fall into the trap of waiting – sometimes for more information or sometimes for clarity of situation.

The reality is that waiting provides no inputs.

But this is far worse than pursuing a “OK enough” choice quickly.

But then one needs to step back and realise at times that the utopian solution simply does not or may not exist.

Action on the other hand often provides feedback and clarity.

Even if you take an action and it is the “wrong” choice, the act of taking that path will reveal new and useful information which can help individual/organization towards the right choice.

If you are in a rush to launch a new product , and a simple research gives you some indication to carve a marketing message. Even if the original message may not have provided the correct direction, the mistake will provide you valuable information about what can you do next.

However, by taking action quickly, what you did was obtain valuable information about your product and your situation and what not to do.

If you do this quickly enough, you still have enough time to turn around and carve out a new marketing campaign for the product.

Decision making in business life is often imperfect. One doesn’t have complete information. The clarity one hopes for is simply unavailable.

Despite the best efforts to gather and analyze information (which in most cases is  worth doing), at some point, it’s worth realizing that thinking or analyzing more will have only marginal material impact on potential outcomes.

In those situations, it is far better to simply take any reasonable action than to be stuck with “Analysis Paralysis “situation.

You can’t completely eliminate uncertainty from your life, but you can choose how (and how quickly) you respond to it.

Afterall , It is easy to classify decisions as  good or bad in hindsight but in real life decisions always need to be based on the information on hand at any given time .