How Decision Paralysis Saved Canada

In 1812 the United States and Britain were at war. A Canadian would tell you that the war of 1812 was an attempted land grab on the part of the United States who saw a large and largely undefended British Canada as an opportunity, to cement their “manifest destiny” to control all of North America - according to Jefferson it would just be "a matter of marching".

An American (If they know about the war. Outside of Canada the war has largely been forgotten.) would tell you that they were fighting to stop the practice of the British essentially enslaving American sailors, and as a way for the United States to assert its sovereignty. 

The congress of the United States got together and made the most contested declaration of war the United States has ever made, and then and there the United States and the United Kingdom were at war.

At the time the United Kingdom was also fighting a war in Europe against Napoleon, so needless to say they didn’t really have to resources to spare to protect Canada. Whatever resources were currently in Canada were all that were really going to be able to be used in the war (until Napoleon was dealt with).

For the sake of simplicity I will refer to those who fought on the side of the United Kingdom as “Canadian” however British Soldiers, local Militia and most importantly Canadian Indigenous communities all played a role in these forces. 

Now the Americans had plans to invade Canada through three points. One was through the Detroit-Windsor border, one was through the Niagara area, and the other was the march up through New York towards Montreal. 

While there were a number of strategic errors on all fronts by the Americans, the case that is most related to the moral of the story happened in Detroit.

In August of 1812 General William Hull, an American general had retreated to Fort Detroit after being driven out of Canada after his successful initial invasion a few months prior. William Hull also had a bit of a problem, he didn’t know specifically how to react to this counter attack, but more specifically he didn’t know how to deal with the Indigenous allies to the British. 

Instead of trying to fight the smaller Canadian force he sat his troops in his fort and did nothing. He didn’t want to engage, he didn’t want to attempt retreat, he sat around and failed to make any decisions. At the time Hull’s forces had been the ones with the best chance of being able to take over Canada, and here he was stewing and not making any decisions.

He kept sitting around, not delegating when he didn't have a clear plan and instead let his troops sit in the fort, afraid of what the Indigenous allies might do to them, not realizing that making no decision was the worst choice he could make - chances are we would've defended the fort if they had fought.

Thanks to his decision paralysis, the Canadian forces were able to secure a speedy surrender when they finally made their move on the Fort, this victory helped Canada to stop one of the three invasion points for the United States, but more importantly it gave Canadian forces to morale boost and inspiration they needed to keep fighting until the war ended in 1815.

Capturing Canada had not been a matter of marching as Thomas Jefferson has predicted. Instead a failure to take ANY action in a time of crisis lead to the preservation of Canada. Sure there were other factors, but if General Hull has taken any action they probably could have at least sent the Canadians away from Detroit, and the American forces could've bought themselves time to invade Canada again another day.

What lessons can the war of 1812 teach us today? Well what it shows us is the danger in decision paralysis - the practice of instead of making a choice - you avoid making any choice the hope of avoiding the wrong one. It’s a situation to reappears constantly throughout history.

Look at the current (Feb 2019) situation regarding Brexit in the United Kingdom. Some Conservative’s don’t want to pick May’s deal because it isn’t “hard Brexit” enough, while Labour doesn’t like it because it isn’t staying in the EU, and everyone else has their own reason for not wanting to make the choice to go with it.

The thing is that Parliament instead of making A choice is making the worst possible choice by deciding to make no choice at all. If Britain was going to do something as self explosive as a no-deal Brexit they’d still be better off making that decision and sticking to it, and preparing for it, than deciding to keep stalling on having to make a choice - making the wrong choice isn’t the issue, making no choice at all is. 

Decision paralysis is a more widespread phenomenon then many of us realize. It happens when we have a lot of work to do and we don’t know where to start (In my opinion it is the root cause of procrastination), it happens to people trying to cope with debt, it happens with businesses trying to decide on their future direction, instead of making a choice we simply put it off and make no choice - and no choice is always the worst choice.

How do we overcome it? For me personally I just resolve to make a decision and if it turns out to be bad one I scrap it quickly and move on - at least that way I would’ve tried it and learned and been able to turn things around instead of spluttering out of control out of fear of making the wrong choice.

When you feel you’re about to end up committing decision paralysis follow this system:

1. Ask what will happen if you do nothing - this will reassure you of the importance of doing something.
2. If I make a wrong choice is the outcome still better than doing nothing? - As long as this is true it is a decision worth making.
3. Make the choice, try to pick the best one if you can but more important is to pick something - something is always better than nothing.

Just remember you can also change course later, it may not be fun or easy but you can do it, doing nothing gives you a 100% shot of failure, do something gives you at least the slimmest shot at success. 

Who knows maybe that next decision you make, instead of putting it off will lead to a billion dollar company, or a cure for cancer, or even a plan to take over Canada.

Remember a 1% chance of success is infinitely better than a 0% chance.