Decisiveness is one of the most important qualities entrepreneurs need. Being decisive means being able to make decisions firmly and relatively quickly, rather than sitting on them indefinitely or changing your mind later.
Decisiveness is important, too, because it means that as a business owner, your response time is faster, you can resolve problems faster, get started on new ideas sooner and adapt to new circumstances without raising more issues.
It also increases your authority and reputation as a strong leader, earning you your team’s respect and allowing you to set an example at the same time.
If you yourself are a chronic procrastinator, however, being decisive will be a challenge. Faced with a tough decision, you might delay your answer as long as possible or avoid making the choice altogether. Fortunately, there are some strategies you can use to foster more decisiveness in your own life.
First, understand indecision.
Before you start changing your outlook on decision-making, you need to understand the roots of indecision. There are many reasons why you might procrastinate, but most entrepreneurs who do so end up in a trap of analysis paralysis. This happens when you overanalyze a problem too much, searching for a perfect solution that simply isn’t there.
You may run over the same options, hoping for some new evidence to appear, or toggle between two choices, unable to determine which is better. So, how can you overcome this?
1. Forget perfection.
Winston Churchill said it best: “Perfection is the enemy of progress.” Perfectionism often holds us back from deciding. In any scenario, we want to choose the “perfect” option, the one with oodles of benefits and no downsides. Unfortunately, such options aren’t realistic, so we’re left instead with a handful of options that aren’t particularly good or bad.
If you want to resolve the situation, you’ll need to ditch any notions of perfectionism that…