"Just make an 'effing decision."

We often talk about those who make snap judgements as somehow less able decision makers - “never judge a book by its cover.” But the reality is that consumers, shoppers, footballers, referees (well most of them), you and even me all do this. It's not substandard. It's efficient. And humans have evolved to take these shortcuts, freeing up headspace for more important stuff like what time you need to take your son to Socatots.

Malcolm Gladwell in his book, Blink, talks about our ability to "thin slice" - using limited information to make a decision, enhanced by our past experience of similar situations. It's how great footballers seem to have an uncanny knack of always picking out their team mates - they simply have a mental map of where the team are on the pitch, and what sort of runs they typically make. All of which allows them to make that “no-look” pass to the centre forward for a tap in.

It seems to me that us marketeers don't trust our mental maps enough.

Perhaps, when writing briefs, we have gone too far the other way. We pore over research debriefs, qual this, after quant that, and ethnography the other….. Carefully considering each word in a whirlwind of collaboration with key agency partners to eventually get to an insight upon which to beautifully craft a rather long winded document telling anyone who will read it everything they ever wanted to know about this project and quite a lot they didn't too.

Gladwell suggests that such analysis paralysis generates worse decisions than some of our knee jerk reactions.

Or perhaps it's worse. When a play on words in the brief means that we can have a rather convenient dual meaning. Oh aren’t we clever? This always leads to problems. Generating work which isn't what we expected as agency responds to meaning xx, whilst client was really wanting a response based on meaning zz. 

If there's a genuine rationale for both routes, then there are two briefs. Simple.

And then there's the client that writes TBC in key boxes, unchallenged by the agency. Surely this can never be a good thing - storing up problems for the coming weeks.

Avoiding a decision is always worse than taking one. End of. “I wish they’d just make an effing decision" as a respected* line manager once said to me (I'm paraphrasing - he was more robust than that) - on that occasion, he was right. Procrastination was simply delaying the inevitable. We were never going to do that project, but nobody had the balls to say so. Kevin Pieterson's England career was in limbo for some time before being put out of his misery. At least he knew where he stood, and it wasn't in the England dressing room. The problem with clarity is that it’s not always what we want to hear and some people are afraid of the fall out. 

It's our job as marketeers to take difficult decisions often without all the facts. By doing this, we give consumers our brand’s back story. Hopefully, helping them to make positive snap judgements when they are in the moment of truth.

* not really.