Making good decisions is critical
Jeff Hawkins spoke at Stanford recently as part of my favorite podcast, the Entrepreneurial Thought Leaders class. I’ve heard him talk about his theory of working smarter, not harder before, and I agreed with the concept, but he added a new twist, which unified some thoughts I’ve had about how to work.
I’ve given a lot of thought to the notion that the biggest problem in any startup is working on the wrong thing/waste. I’ve seen surveys, blog posts, videos, etc about it. If you’re in a startup, think back about how company resources have been allocated, and think about what percentage of those were wasted. It’s huge.
So, how do you avoid waste? This is where Jeff’s talk comes in – you make good decisions. It seems stupid and simple, but in my experience, it’s really hard to make good decisions. In my opinion, the best decisions are made when people with different opinions and data are able to add to the shared pool of knowledge. However, this rarely works – people anchor themselves on their opinions, data gets ignored, there are other political forces present, people get emotional, etc. So, companies move forward with less-than-optimal decisions and hope that things work out despite them. That’s OK in a big company, to a point (General Motors). In a startup, a few bad decisions mean you’re out of business.
Back when I was running First Person Software with Brett Levine, I remember we had long talks about critical decisions trying to collaboratively come up with the best choice. We’d game out various scenarios like a chess game, and come to the best decision. This was a huge advantage for us, as whenever it was time to actually make the decision, we were better prepared, and our collaborative approach led to a much better decision than a solo one. Jeff talks about Nokia being a rubber boot company for a really long time, and then someone started making decisions which led them to become what they are today.
Could you be making better decisions in your life? Not that I’m making bad decisions, but I’m sure that if I improved this ability across everything I do, things would be better.
I’ve given a lot of thought to the notion that the biggest problem in any startup is working on the wrong thing/waste. I’ve seen surveys, blog posts, videos, etc about it. If you’re in a startup, think back about how company resources have been allocated, and think about what percentage of those were wasted. It’s huge.
So, how do you avoid waste? This is where Jeff’s talk comes in – you make good decisions. It seems stupid and simple, but in my experience, it’s really hard to make good decisions. In my opinion, the best decisions are made when people with different opinions and data are able to add to the shared pool of knowledge. However, this rarely works – people anchor themselves on their opinions, data gets ignored, there are other political forces present, people get emotional, etc. So, companies move forward with less-than-optimal decisions and hope that things work out despite them. That’s OK in a big company, to a point (General Motors). In a startup, a few bad decisions mean you’re out of business.
Back when I was running First Person Software with Brett Levine, I remember we had long talks about critical decisions trying to collaboratively come up with the best choice. We’d game out various scenarios like a chess game, and come to the best decision. This was a huge advantage for us, as whenever it was time to actually make the decision, we were better prepared, and our collaborative approach led to a much better decision than a solo one. Jeff talks about Nokia being a rubber boot company for a really long time, and then someone started making decisions which led them to become what they are today.
Could you be making better decisions in your life? Not that I’m making bad decisions, but I’m sure that if I improved this ability across everything I do, things would be better.
posted by Chris at 10:25 AM
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