“I have bad news”
I was in a meeting with my team planning and executing the launch of my mindfulness meditation online programme. This was my first online programme, so there had been lots of learning. We were set to launch the next morning. I had returned from an all-consuming business trip to Jamaica the day before. This meeting was just to make sure all the “i”s were dotted, and the “t”s crossed.
We all froze when Silke started to relay the bad news – the emails we had set up were not being sent in order, or on time. Silke had spent all weekend testing the sequences. She had contacted the email marketing platform provider on Saturday. They were totally non-responsive.
This was not just bad news … this was very, very, very bad news.
Despite arriving home from a gruelling day of travel late the evening before, I had spent the time that morning doing my yoga, meditation, affirmation and journaling routine – what I call my grounding ritual. So, I was in the frame of mind to be ready for whatever the universe chose to throw at me that day. And WOW – did it throw me a whammy! Murphy’s Law states: “Anything that can go wrong will go wrong”. This was the perfect application of the law.
Luckily, in my grounded frame of mind, I was able to look past Murphy and guide the team to:
- Identify our options – wait for a response from the provider; launch with the current current provider and change later, or switch to a new provider.
- Select the best option – we decided to switch to a new provider and change the launch date
- Identify, evaluate and choose the new provider
- Set up the account with the new provider
- Recast the project plan so that everyone was clear and agreed on what we needed to do and by when
ALL WITHIN 25 MINUTES!
You see, making decisions doesn’t have to take long. It’s the lead up to the decision that takes time. Here are 3 decision traps that can cause us to procrastinate about making a decision:
- Making the quest for ALL information paramount. It’s impossible to have all the information we need. We just need to decide what’s the most important information needed right now and get it.
- Fear of making the wrong decision – who wants to look like a poor decision maker? Who wants to be branded a failure? No-one. So, we remain paralyzed by fear, not realizing that doing nothing is a decision – just one that happens by default rather than be design.
- There’s also our tendency to hold on to costs (money and time) that have already been incurred and cannot be recouped i.e., sunk costs. Many a devastating decision has been made on the belief that we MUST carry on down the road already built and paid for.
To get over these and accelerate your decision-making:
- Be clear on your goal in order to create urgency around the decision.
- Accept that you will never have all, or even the best information to identify and evaluate options.
- Know that decisions can be changed. This requires close monitoring to determine if your decision is working out the way you intended.
- Accept your leadership role – the buck stops with you! At some point, you just have to say “Thanks so much for your input. Here’s what we are going to do”.
There was palpable relief amongst the team when we made the decision. We delayed the launch for a week, giving extra time for more Murphies (which of course, happened). But we launched on the new date. We are now well on our way to helping thousands of people learn how to meditate and find ease, grace and joy in their lives. Murphy – you did not win this one!
For more on the “Joyful Being: Mindfulness Meditation Essentials” programme – margueriteorane.com/joyful-being
