625 | From Procrastination to Progress: Leading Through Decision Paralysis

Ever feel stuck staring at a decision for way too long, second guessing, overanalyzing, and literally getting nowhere? You're not alone.

Today we're breaking down how to stop the swirl and start moving with confidence. Because progress starts with a decision. That is coming up next.

Welcome to the Chris LoCurto Show, where we discuss leadership and life and discover that business is what you do, not who you are. Welcome to the show, folks.

Today we are talking about overcoming decision paralysis, or some of you know it as paralysis, analysis or analysis paralysis or paralysis of the analysis.

So many different ways to look at this, but how do we not just spend so much time focused on trying to make a decision without actually making a decision? That is what we're going to talk about today.

Intro - Story (00:01:10)

But to begin, I want to throw in a story which we're all aware of, and that's in 1940, that when Hitler was sweeping across Europe, or sweeping through Europe, however you want to look at that, over 330 allied troops were trapped.

They were on the beaches of Dunkirk. You may have seen the movie, uh, this may have been very impactful for you, but here's the crazy thing.

Surrounded by the enemy on the beaches, the British military leaders debated what to do. Should we evacuate? It seems impossible. Time's running out.

It's not long before he's going to be there or they are going to be there. Then, in a moment of bold leadership, Winston Churchill made the call.

He initiated what they called Operation Dynamo. He didn't have full clarity, he didn't have guaranteed resources, and he definitely did not have a flawless plan.

But there's one thing that he had and that we all need to have, and that is resolve. Over 800 civilian and military boats were mobilized, and in just nine days, hundreds of thousands of lives were saved.

Now, that moment could have been frozen in analysis paralysis. It could have been frozen in debates.

It could have been frozen in risk assessments. It could have definitely been frozen, and I'm positive it was frozen in fear of failure. But instead, a bold decision led to a historic rescue.

Now, obviously, you are not facing a battlefield like this. However, indecision, whether it is small, whether it is big in leadership, it could literally sabotage your team. And it usually does it quietly.

It obviously sabotages momentum because you get frozen up and it definitely sabotages growth.

So today, we're breaking down what causes decision paralysis and giving you practical tools to move forward from procrastination to progress.

What Is Decision Paralysis and Why Does It Matter? (00:03:12)

So first, let's start off with the first thing. What is decision paralysis? And literally, what does it matter, right?

So by definition, decision paralysis is the inability to decide due to overthinking, due to fear, due to too many options, it literally leads to stagnation because we just get stuck.

And then as we're stuck, if we are not moving, things start to fall apart, things start to rot. Right? So we could see that stagnation like a, like a body of water that's not moving. Right.

But it also leads to missed opportunities. And I mean everywhere, it leads to missed opportunities. So think of a small business owner who, I don't know, debates on hiring like a new salesperson, but overanalyzes every single variable.

Six months later, the team is overwhelmed, revenue is flat, and the workload is unsustainable. Right now, it doesn't mean that it wasn't a good idea to take time to calculate the risk.

But when we don't decide to do something and we don't even try to solve the problem because we're stuck in paralysis, analysis, fear of failure for decision making, then what happens is we grow stagnant, we miss opportunities, we could lose morale.

Our business could not only go flat, but it could also go backwards. Our team will most likely go backwards because we're not making the change.

So imagine what is your team doing if the thing that you need to do is to continue to get them? And I just picked a salesperson. It could be any, it could be any role.

It could be an administrative, fulfilling orders. We're making sales like crazy, but we're not doing a good job fulfilling orders. Right.

We're not providing the service or the products that we need. Whatever it is, what happens to the team in that moment, your workload in one way, shape or form is going to become unsustainable.

You're going to have to do something different. You're probably stressed out to the max. You're probably bringing that home to your family. You're probably taking it out on team members or somebody is somewhere.

You might even be losing champions in this moment. It's just not worth it. Indecision many times feel safer than action.

But the truth is, quite often, I'm not going to say 100% of the time, because there's many times I have known not to make a decision because I felt God was holding back something.

And then by waiting, this is the caveat here. Knowing that that's what God was doing, or believing that that's what God was doing.

And then by waiting just a while, God revealed something that made it abundantly clear as to why I was I was waiting and it worked out.

What Keeps Leaders Stuck in Procrastination? (00:06:08)

So key point number two, what keeps leaders stuck in procrastination? Well, you're not going to be surprised by this because you've all felt it, you've all experienced it.

Fear of failure is probably the number one. What if this thing backfires? What if this doesn't work out?

What if I hire the wrong person? What if, what if, what if, what if, what if? One of the things I love to say to a leader when they are stuck in this place is, what if I like to change the inflection to something positive?

What if, what if it does backfire? Then what do we do? What if you hire the wrong person? Then what do we do?

If we have phenomenal accountability in place, we're probably going to find that out very quickly, and then we can move on and do something correct. What if? Right.

That fear of failure, of what if on the negative is a terrible thing. Perfectionism is another thing. Waiting for the perfect plan, waiting for the perfect timing, waiting for everything, you know, all the stars to align. Overwhelm is another thing.

You know, maybe there's too many options. There's a reason why when you go into a grocery store and you see 17 different items, 17 different brands, 17 different flavors, that you struggle in picking something, it's too much.

It's too many options. You don't want to make a bad decision, right? There are some of you out there that can just walk in and just go, I'm just going to take this and move on.

Right? Because you're not worried about regret, right? But for a lot of folks, regret is something that they hate. I'm one of those people.

I love making calculated decisions and taking calculated risks and gaining as much perspective as I can because I hate being on the other side going, well, that was stupid, right?

So overwhelm, many times, can keep you from making the right decision because you got too many options, too much input, not enough clarity.

And I will say this. I'm so glad you're listening to this show. I praise God that you're here with us. I praise God that we have the opportunity to teach through this show.

But there are a lot of folks out there that are putting way too much stuff in their brain that's not helpful.

So with us, one of the things we are always trying to do is not only show you the problem, show you why it's a problem, you know, but help you by giving you answers on what you can do about it.

There's a lot of podcasts out there or books out there that are sharing a ton of information just to align with you, but not actually really solving it or not good enough solutions.

And what ends up happening when you put that much information in your brain is you get overwhelmed with information. What do I do? It's hard to make a decision. I've had people over the decades go, Chris, I've read all these books, I've done all these things.

I've listened to all these podcasts and everything, and I don't know what to do. And that's when I will say, stop. Pick one thing that's helping and go after that.

Pick one influence that's helping you make right decisions and go after that. Because you're getting all of these influences into your brain and it's too much information. You don't know where to start. So overwhelm is definitely an issue.

Another issue is really personal identity issues like, what if I get this wrong? What if. What does it say about me if I mess this thing up? Right? That goes back to that fear of failure. Obviously.

Another issue is team culture. You know, a team waits on you, you know, because you're waiting on clarity. And this really ends up stalling the entire process.

So when that happens, unfortunately, instead of just fixing it, a lot of times people just wait for it to right size itself.

And that's not going to happen. So think of a leader who, you know, the team stalls on moving into a new CRM system, right, because they fear team resistance or they.

They've, you know, heard. You know, these processes take forever and usually there's a lot of failure. So what ends up being the result?

Everybody keeps struggling with the broken system that they currently have, you know, or the system that doesn't have enough information.

And you can't, you know, you can't mine your database for your client's information and get the right stuff to them or right products or whatever.

And what happens is, is that the whole process suffers. Your team suffers, productivity suffers, all of that suffers. Every single delayed decision, believe it or not, will compound over time if you don't do something about it.

One hesitation becomes three, three becomes nine.

Then it becomes culture, unfortunately. So the more you delay, the bigger the issue it becomes.

5 Practical Steps to Move from Procrastination to Progress (00:10:50)

Key point number three, five practical steps that you can move from procrastination to progress. All right, so definitely get into the notes and get these. We've got these in the notes.

Obviously, I'm going to tell them to you. If you can write them down fast enough, that's going to be great. But definitely get into the notes for these five steps.

First thing you need to do, clarify the real goal, not the real decision that needs to be made or the right piece of information. Ask what outcomes are we after? What are we looking for?

Strip away all of the noise. I call it taking it off the table. Get the junk off the table. That doesn't have anything to do what the expected outcome. Where are we going? What is the goal?

What is the destination here? So, for example, you don't need a. A perfect full marketing campaign. Maybe there is a real goal to just increase, I don't know, lead flows by. By 20%, right?

You don't have to go ballistic. We're just focusing on one thing. So if we focus on that one goal, we're looking for 20% growth in our leads. Okay? That's it. That's all we're looking for.

Not necessarily a hire, not necessarily anything else. We'll fill in those pieces as we go. Now let's reverse engineer this. That's the place we want to get to. How do we get to that outcome? Right.

More clarity you have, it reduces complexity. Number two, shrink the decision. So break the big choice into a few steps.

So for example, instead of like just saying, hey, let's go launch a second location instead of jumping there, and a lot of folks do jump there first.

What if you just decided to just run the numbers, Gain perspective from the numbers. What if you just went out and scouted three possible sites?

What if you went and looked at areas and you gained a lot of perspective by, maybe it's too expensive. Maybe there's nothing that fits what you're trying to accomplish.

Maybe you don't have enough people in the areas that you're thinking of opening another location.

Get the information that would definitely. We would call this like minor gates and major gates, right? So minor gates are something that if you go through it, it's not that big of a deal.

You can keep moving forward, but a major gate shuts the whole thing down. So let's say you run the numbers and where you're wanting, you find a great location, but there's nobody in that area, or there's only a handful of people in that area.

Well, then why would we go open a whole new location? Do we have the ability to market people to that location? Do we have a, you know, what is the market saturation like in that location for the thing that we provide?

Go and get those types of information before you go putting together a huge plan. If what you discover is, man, this is going to hurt us immensely.

This is. It's going to take a long time for us to try and build up to being profitable. Then maybe you don't make that decision right now.

Maybe that's something we put on the back burner until we have better numbers or better increase or better draw from that community or something else opens up in that area. Right?

So looking at those bigger pieces, then it helps you to not put a whole plan together of expansion.

It may shut the whole thing down or it could do the exact opposite. You might find that you have got a location not too far from you or decently from you.

Who knows that you have a large market that does not have a lot of people providing what you provide in it.

And if you have a good marketing ability or marketing campaign style or whatever it is that draws in the people to you, then maybe you can step into that place.

These are pieces of information that will help you to make a better decision. And by taking those smaller steps. I know that those seem like big steps. They're really not.

What you're doing is you're going in and taking big chunks out of the decision making process by taking a small step, running the numbers, market research, those types of things will help you to not have to go heavily into an entire plan or they will back up you putting the effort into an entire plan.

Number three, assign ownership. Listen, don't let group think or committee indecision run the show. Many times what happens is, is that I'm huge on gaining quality perspective. I want perspective.

I'm not the only smart person. I've hired smart people. I have people in my life that are smart. I want to see what people think. That helps me to get information and then I go make decisions. Right.

Sometimes I use that information, sometimes the information doesn't even apply it.

You know, it's important for me to gain perspective and see if somebody knows something that I don't know, if I can get that information, then that gives me a better calculation on taking the risk that I want to take.

However many times people are looking for the group or you know, this committee style to come up with the decision and you might not be able to do that.

You might not have the right people for that. You might have people that are too scared. You might have people that are unwilling to make a decision to move forward.

You may have people that are afraid that it's going to affect them personally. Right? So you need to make sure that you don't just live by that. Assign at least one leader to drive the process and set a deadline forward.

So if this is something that we're gonna do, you know, we've clarified the real goal, we've shrunk the decision down, then let's make sure that we've got one person who owns this process.

Whatever the thing is that we are doing, you know, it's a new product, it's a new service, it's adding a new CRM, whatever that is.

Let's make sure that we have somebody who has ownership because ownership ends that ambiguity of, you know, who's supposed to be doing this.

And nobody's moving anything forward because, you know, nobody wants to take responsibility. Number four, normalize imperfect action. You are not going to listen to me.

You are not going to get it a hundred percent right, and that is okay.

This concept that it's got to be perfect is delaying everything now, once again, I'm the. I'm the gain quality perspective guy, right? So I'm going to make sure.

I want to make sure that that strategy is put together very well, but it's not going to have to be perfect.

I want to do everything I can to put together a great strategy, but once I'm there, that's it. I'm not going to keep looking and seeing. Is there a way to perfect it?

Is there a way to make it 100% bulletproof if we've got a good strategy together? Let's go, let's move. Let's make this happen right?

So many times leaders, you know, who test ideas quickly learn and improve, and they realize, hey, I could go do this incredibly well.

Or many leaders test and prove and then go, but our plan's not perfect. Something could fail, and we don't know what it is. Listen, as long as it's not a fatal failure and you've thought through everything.

Like, one of the questions I ask all the time is, how could this fail? And then I want to go through every possible way that it could fail. I want my team giving input on that.

I want to know, but then move. Do something done is better than perfect every single time. And people are going to be forgiving.

If there's something that's not that big of a deal that is a problem, and you fix the problem, just know that you're going to fix the problem, right?

So don't sit around waiting for everything to be perfect. Put it together and move forward. Number five, commit to a decision deadline.

Now, this is, I think this is a best friend to folks who struggle to make decisions or people who are stuck in, you know, Paralysis analysis, right?

Make sure you know when you need to decide. Because when you decide matters, the decision gives power to the process. This is something we are doing.

If we're making a decision to move forward, that gives power, that gives inertia to the thing that you're trying to do.

So maybe give yourself 48 hours for small decisions, you know, that you got to make a decision on, you know, so that you can have time to process and think.

Often I like to work through everything and then if I have just this inkling inside of me there's something in my gut that says I may not have everything, I have no problem in delaying. I'm usually a 24 hour kind of guy.

But maybe give it 48 hours. Now, if it is a big decision, and I'm talking a big decision, this may take a couple of weeks so that you could come back to it 47 more times.

Look at it, step away, talk to somebody, come back, look at it, step away. You know, make an adjustment, make an adjustment. But it may take you time to make a big, big decision.

If you've got all the info, if it's a big decision and you've got all the info and you've calculated the risk and everybody's on board and we're good to go, pull the trigger, right?

But if you are indecisive at all, then put a timeline, a deadline on when you need to make the decision by. So that we can free everybody up from this process, right? We can do something.

We can at least move forward with the things that we are currently focused on. So those are the five key takeaways for you to be able to practical steps, if you will, to move from procrastination to progress.

Coaching Your Team Through Decision Paralysis (00:20:26)

Next thing, our key point number four, I'm using multiple sets of numbers here. Coach your team through decision paralysis. So teach what to do when somebody is stuck asking what's stopping you?

What decision would move you forward today? What would help you? What's holding you up? What are you feeling inside? What are you thinking? What are you afraid of?

And keep them on. If you ask that to High D, they're going to go, I'm not afraid of anything. Okay, what concerns you about this, right? Make sure that you're getting to everything you possibly can so that you can coach them through the process.

Now you need to be somebody who's already modeling kind of, you know, confident but humble decision making, right?

If they can see that you've been working through these processes before, then it helps them to make decisions as well, so show them it's okay to act without knowing every single thing.

Now obviously make sure that you survey their, all the information that they do have to know that they've done a good job gaining quality perspective.

Don't just tell them, hey, you got, you, you asked five questions. Move forward, right? Make sure this is coaching, right? Take a look at what information they do have.

Take a look at how they got to it. Take a look at what questions they're asking. Consider the personality style of the person you're talking about. Is this somebody who hates details? Is this somebody who will, you know, bring way too many details?

Is this somebody who is focused more on, you know, pleasing people than putting a quality strategy together? Whatever it is, make sure that you've evaluated this so that you can guide them on the process.

Make sure that you're creating a culture where decisions flow, not where they freeze and get stuck, but instead people learn the process. You're probably not going to be able to get them to that place overnight.

Some people you will, some people will see the decision making process and go, yeah, I'm all about that. I got that. I can figure this out.

And then others you may have to come to, you know, half a dozen times to help them to think through and process through something. The big key here on this is if you're going to model it, one of the things to do is don't tell them.

Let them see what you've done, but don't tell them what to do. Ask questions. You're coaching, you're coaching, you're coaching. Ask as many questions as you can to help them to get to a place where, where they know how to go after the information.

When I was, gosh, in my early 30s I think, or mid-30s maybe it was in my mid-30s, I remember people coming to me and going, how do you research stuff?

And I'm like, what do you mean how do I research stuff? Like I don't know how to research stuff.

And it was something that was just like, it was so natural for me to be able to go after information that I thought I was missing something in the question until I realized most people aren't taught how to research how to go get it from now.

You know, that was a while ago, that was 20 years ago.

So today's a little bit different and people have plenty of tools at their hand. You know, chat GPT, obviously, Google, YouTube and you know, maybe find some places that aren't hiding information from you.

But there's plenty of, of ways that people can get to research. But still to this day, I think people don't know how to go after information. So model that for them.

Teach them how to go after information and then instead of telling them what to do when it's their turn, coach, guide, ask questions, help them.

Now, where could you find that? What information could you get from there? What should you be looking for? How should you prompt this stuff? Whatever it is.

So listen, leadership isn't just about making decisions. It's literally about creating an environment where decisions get made or people aren't afraid or people can take the risk because they know they're not going to get their head chopped off in doing so.

Action Items for Listeners (00:24:28)

So point number five, here's some action items for all of you that have been listening to this episode. Number one, write down one thing. Identify one decision that you've been delaying. Write it down. Put some--

You know that there's something you're probably holding on to, something you haven't gone after yet. It may not be something that's just like, you know, giving you a sour stomach, but there's probably something in there that you're like, I haven't moved out on that.

So write down that. That thing that you're delaying. That decision you're delaying.

Number two, apply the five steps that we talked about. You know, clarify the goal, break it down, assign ownership, take imperfect action and set a deadline.

Number three, ask your team this week, where are we stuck and what's the next best step? What do we do? Get your team involved. Don't just tell them. Get them thinking for themselves.

You will be amazed at what your team can come up with. You probably have some decent answers, but it's great to gain different perspective and see where your team is.

They may come up with stuff you're just absolutely not even thinking about. And obviously that's the hope. The hope is, is that we encourage them to think for themselves.

Number four, evaluate your leadership style. Are you creating clarity or are you contributing to confusion in this?

Right. If you are not getting in there and working through these processes and these steps like I'm talking about, if you're kind of looks like you're holding things close to the vest.

If you're just looking really indecisive due to fear, I promise you, you're creating confusion instead of creating clarity.

Number five, make one, just one, just one meaningful move by the end of the week. Don't wait. Decide.

What are you going to do?

Additional Resources (00:26:21)

All right. Some additional resources that we have for you. Episode 315, how to be a stronger strategic decision maker. This is where we dive into the power of strategic decision making.

Not just reacting, not just guessing, but thinking like a leader who knows where they're going and how to get there.

Conclusion (00:26:40)

So you don't need more time. You don't need a perfect plan.

You just need the courage to move. You're not Churchill. You're not rescuing troops on the beach. But you are leading people who are stuck, frustrated, or waiting on you.

So when you make strong, clear decisions, you give your team permission to act. Progress is built on decisions. One choice at a time, one leader at a time, starting with you. Well, folks, that is all the time I have for today.

I hope this helps you immensely. As always, take this information. Change your leadership, change your business, change your life. And join us on the next episode.