How prevalent is "analysis paralysis" in your organization? - SmartBrief

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How prevalent is “analysis paralysis” in your organization?

2 min read

Leadership

SmartPulse — our weekly nonscientific reader poll in SmartBrief on Leadership — tracks feedback from more than 210,000 business leaders. We run the poll question each week in our e-newsletter.

How prevalent is “analysis paralysis” in your organization?

  • Not at all — We do a great job of avoiding it: 12%
  • Somewhat — We occasionally get sucked into the data: 37%
  • Very — We spend too much time analyzing versus deciding: 38%
  • Extremely — We never make decisions because all we do is analyze: 13%

Get out of the data. The good news is, we have tons of data. The bad news is we drown in it. There’s a simple approach for staying out of analysis paralysis or for breaking out of that dynamic when it rears its ugly head: ask if that incremental analysis changes the answer. If the results of the new analysis won’t change your recommendation, don’t do the analysis and move into decision making mode. Analysis paralysis is a symptom of risk avoidance. You get paid to take calculated risks. So put down the calculator and take the risk.

Mike Figliuolo is managing director of thoughtLEADERS, author of  the upcoming book “The Elegant Pitch: Create a Compelling Recommendation, Build Broad Support, and Get it Approved” and “One Piece of Paper: The Simple Approach to Powerful, Personal Leadership.”