The Importance of Momentum

Making decisions faster is usually more important than deliberation

The decisions that you make at work are usually reversible.

(Especially for most you reading this)

And yet, we spend forever discussing how, why and what we should be doing. Often, the incremental benefit in making the “right” improvement is eroded by the weeks or months taken to decide on it, during which an improvement could have been in place. The more people in the decision, the longer it drags on.

It’s usually better to make a choice (ideally with a soft launch or MVP) and then iterate from there. Very few of us are making decisions so big and important that they can’t be reversed.

It’s hard to do this because we don’t want to be seen to make mistakes. However, in startups with a short runway, the pressure to make change and show progress outweighs this, to their advantage. As companies get bigger, they get less risk tolerant, in general. You can make a (good) name for yourself by taking in sufficient data, reasoning, making a decisions and reviewing with time and real evidence from reality.

Make sure that those involved know an improvement is going to be trialled to avoid panic. Get opinions from those that will be affected for better decisions and more buy in. But it’s always easier to give one a person final say than canvas (and require the approval of) a large number of people (i.e. more than 3). Again, this is where startups have an advantage over big companies. It’s also why ‘decentralised’ organisations very rarely outperform centralised ones (yet another reason why web3 is a terrible idea).

Side note: Don’t let sunk cost fallacy get in the way of changing tack on a bad decision. If you think there’s a better path, take it now.

Originally published on my Substack at https://foundernotes.substack.com/