I recently went to a Management Roundtable session taught by Jay Paap . During the session, I heard a sage advice that a father gave to his son who was rushing to get married -
“Marry someone who doesn’t make you most happy, but someone who makes you least unhappy”
I won’t dwell into personal side of it, but believe this has applicability to business world (after few words are replaced). Every day we are faced with decisions on topics ranging from which project to back to which investment to make. Many organizations have exhaustive processes (e.g. stage-gate) and multiple metrics (e.g. NPV, IRR) to help in the decision-making. The output is as good as the assumptions, and many a times assumptions rely heavily on the “what makes us most happy” and with limited / no outlook to “what makes us least unhappy”.
Which begs a question, can decision making in a business scenario be made more quick & efficient?
The answer is yes. One of the groups who have mastered this is VCs. VCs see hundreds to thousands of business plans in a given year, and go / no-go decisions are typically made in a matter of few minutes. The key is, in addition to positives, to focus on the things that don’t make the complete whole and answer can we bridge that gap / live with it.
Say a company has a cutting edge material technology to make anodes for li-ion battery, A+ team, but will likely require 5 years for commercialization & 2-3 additional funding round. Instead of focusing on technology & team, discussion around investing time-frame & future dilution can enable decision making. Or say a company is thinking of making an acquisition of a smaller player who will provide unique technology to acquirer’s portfolio and grow one of the businesses multi-fold, but the target has a relatively weak management team. The key to decision making is can the acquirer live with the target’s weak management team and if not, are resources available internally or otherwise to fill that gap.
Like everything else in life, the outcome is not perfect – some bad decisions will be made and some good opportunities missed. But on the positive side, the time and resources that are saved can be focused on making current portfolio / projects better / stronger.
Answering what makes you least unhappy and your ability to live with it might be one of the keys to efficient decision-making.
Agree / disagree? Pls leave a comment below.
