Paralysis Through Analysis

It’s good to talk, but it’s not so good to talk endlessly to the point where nothing ever really gets done. I’ve been in leadership in different settings for a few years now, and as much as enjoy committee meetings, as much as I appreciate the value of steering groups and I much as I understand the importance of essential checks and balances, I also know that on occasions you’ve got to act quickly and that sometimes prolonged debate can slow things down to an extent where opportunities can be lost. A scrutiny of this type of paralysis through analysis is essentially what this blog is about.

I’m also absolutely not one of those leaders who just wants to rush everything through without ever really thinking about it either, mind you. I believe that the worst decisions – the type where fairly disastrous outcomes can take years to repair – are often those where leaders have jumped in with both sized-ten Dr. Martens-clad feet first minus any serious consideration of consequences. But, and maybe this is kind of the main point I’m making here, it can also be just as damaging to sit and wait, and wait, and wait for so long without making decisions about anything at all. Different kinds of decisions, made at different paces and often dictated by different circumstances and environments, are key leadership traits that perhaps we just don’t talk about enough.

Knowing how quickly, or indeed how slowly, you should act often comes with experience, in my opinion. Unless you’ve done the job in a particular context for a while, it can sometimes be difficult to gauge exactly what speed you should move at. There are certain situations, usually ones coming at you from external sources, in which the response time is dictated for you, obviously, but for the most part leaders typically get to decide the speed at which they can move with something. If you’ve got the experience and if you pretty much know how things are going to pan out, then why wait? Not everything needs a long meeting or a committee decision, especially if this then means that impetus with an opportunity is lost. Over the course of my career, I’ve worked with many colleagues who get this and who knew when to go quick and when to go slow, but I’ve also worked with some who only knew how to take ages and ages to get anything done. On occasions, back in the day, I often found myself in situations where even if all that had to be done was the opening a Babybel, it would still have taken about three hours of talking about it first. In his Leading book, Sir Alex Ferguson kind of makes a similar point about how some people’s obsession with extensive data analysis can sometimes lead to states of overthinking or even inaction: “I’m sometimes amazed by how people get fixated on information. It’s like standing in a hospital room staring at the numbers on a bedside monitor while the patient chokes to death on a chicken sandwich. You have to consider the human element of life and the way that circumstances and chance can upset everything – even the most accurate and clearly reported data. Knowing the heart-rate of a player and doing all the video analysis in the world of his opposite number isn’t going to help you if he loses control and gets sent off in the first minute.”

Again, what I’m not advocating here is that everything is rushed or that opinions of others aren’t sought, and I’m definitely not in favour of overly hasty, power-hungry leaders constantly making quick calls that are solely of their own making. Far from it – I’ve been there and seen what this can look like on a number of occasions. But, I’ve also witnessed unnecessary delays and I’ve learned that understanding the required pace of dealing with issues can frequently be key to their success. In my current working climate, for example, that of international education, things can frequently move very quickly, and if you don’t also match that speed with your ability to make decisions and tackle issues, then your school can fall behind others which are moving a little faster than you are.

Schools, like almost all large organisations, also like to be clear about their vision, mission and key values. What shouldn’t follow, however, is that leaders become overly occupied in debates about what they mean. Healthy discussion about how this works and what this looks like in the school is fine, especially as practice evolves organically over time, but endless analysis is not. This is, quite simply, because school leaders need to be out and about and actually doing stuff each day, not stuck in boardrooms talking about what school might be like whilst how it really is is happening outside the window, mostly unknown to the people talking about it. There is a superb excerpt from Carlo Ancelotti’s Quiet Leadership book which makes this very same point: “Fortune magazine’s cover story for 21 June 1999 read ‘Why CEOs Fail’. The simple answer was: by not getting things done. The article argued that leaders of major businesses were overly focused on ‘strategy, missions and visions’ and were paying insufficient attention to results (also ignoring their colleagues who were critical in delivering those results). As Herb Kelleher of Southwest Airlines succinctly put it, ‘Strategy, overdone; doing stuff, underdone; our strategy, do stuff.’”

Right from the very start of my leadership journey, I’ve liked to keep things as simple as possible. This is mostly because wherever I’ve worked where strategies and policies have appeared to be quite complicated (usually because leaders like to prove to everyone else just how clever they are!), the daily experience just hasn’t been very positive and it’s always been quite difficult to actually get anything done. The longer I’ve been in leadership, the more that this core belief has been strengthened. Honestly, there really is rarely any benefit at all to making things hard for anyone else to understand, and keeping things as easy for everyone to follow as you can often allows individuals to flourish within a setting. So, all you’ve often got to do is make a plan, know and communicate your priorities, and then work on these items at every opportunity. When this is the case in a school, it’s also so much easier to be able to make decisions at the right pace because you know when you need to move quickly and when taking your time is a more appropriate call. If no one is really sure what the priorities are or what you’re meant to be doing each day, then you’re probably more likely to get the paralysis through analysis situation outlined in this blog. In some places, leaders spend a lot of time talking because they don’t really know what they’re doing, basically.

Also, I’m confident that anyone reading this blog would agree that sometimes opportunities simply come seemingly out of nowhere that you either take quickly or lose, and possibly regret, forever. If moving slowly and talking endlessly is your only style, then you’re likely to miss out on quite a lot of stuff that comes your way over time. At the risk of hammering this point home a little too firmly, let me just reiterate: you’ve got to know when to move quickly, and when to take your time. If you don’t, others are going to take the chances that you miss.

So, to be clear, leaders should not allow analysis to lead to paralysis. Talking and doing can work well together, but too much of the former can often hinder enough of the latter taking place. There is a time for careful consideration, for patience, for consultation and for thoroughly thinking stuff through, but sometimes you’ve also just got to get things done quickly.