The French writer Voltaire once penned: “With great power comes great responsibility” and this is certainly true of most management roles out there, but let’s be honest, we’ve all worked for a boss who didn’t live up to that famous saying.
Assuming it’s not strictly ignorance or ineptitude that challenges an organization’s leadership, what is it that causes perfectly capable people of suddenly being unable to make quality decisions?
In a nutshell, it’s a phenomenon known as Analysis/Paralysis (also sometimes called Paralysis by Analysis). It is when a group or individual enters a state of thinking where they are unable to make a rational, effective decision often because of the overwhelming, sometimes conflicting amount of data causing a tendency to overanalyze the situation.
Business process and leadership writer Lon Roberts identified three types of Analysis/Paralysis:
Analysis Process Paralysis: A leader is unable to make decisions because they find themselves in a cyclical loop reviewing pertinent information over and over, for fear of making the wrong decision.
Decision Precision Paralysis: This takes Analysis Process Paralysis a step further. Instead of the leader getting stuck going over the same information again and again, they continue to draw new conclusions that raise additional questions, that force more analysis. Also, a cyclical loop, this causes the leader to continue to explore possible outcomes without settling.
Uncertainty Paralysis: Most leaders understand that they cannot control the outcome of a decision, but there are times when some leaders don’t want to reach a conclusion without 100% surety. In this case, the information available to reach a decision is not sufficient to reach an acceptable conclusion for the leader, resulting in the Analysis/Paralysis.
According to the book Leadership and Management in Learning Organizations by Clayton Smith, Carson Babich and Mark Lubrick, there are six decision making processes that challenge leaders and sometimes end up with Analysis Paralysis. They are:
Bounded Rationality – This is essentially the inability to make a decision because one does not have all the information needed to make the correct decision. The Catch-22 is, of course, nobody will ever have all the information because we are constantly learning. The idea that there is still more to learn before making a decision can cripple the leader from ever resolving the issue.
Escalation of Commitment – This is the inability to change course after having made a poor decision or reached a faulty conclusion. Depending upon the leader and their internal make-up, the wrong decision may be followed simply as a way of “saving face.”
Time Constraints – With almost every decision comes a deadline, but time constraints can also mean a snap decision has to be made in the moment. If there is too little time to collect necessary data to reach a decision, a leader may be unable to reach a decision at all.
Uncertainty – Obviously, none of us are ever sure of all our decisions, but for leaders, especially after making a few missteps, Analysis/Paralysis leads to a level of decision-making reticence where, if an outcome isn’t all but guaranteed, it won’t be followed. When no outcome can be determined, the decisions are left unmade.
Biases – We all have certain ideas, beliefs and values that impact our everyday decision-making, but when these intersect in a negative way with the process of decision making at an organization, a stalemate may occur. The most common bias found in a workplace is usually confirmation bias, the concept that our beliefs are worthy of more attention and outside beliefs needed play a part in decision making
Conflict – Nobody likes having their ideas challenged, but a leader who is conflict-adverse may hesitate to make the correct decision for fear of dispute with others. Conversely, a leader who over-embraces conflict may simply be hurting the decision-making process but searching for differences with others to avoid making a final decision.
I can appreciate all these types of Analysis/Paralysis and why they happen, but from a 50,000-foot viewpoint, I believe it simply comes down to fear. Effective leaders cannot operate under a cloud of fear. But what to do when fear takes over? I’ll address this more in my next blog.