After two days at the 10th Global Peter Drucker Forum in Vienna, I have the head full of new ideas, given to me by extremely successful managers, entrepreneurs of all kinds, young students on their way to becoming the same and conversations with my fellow teachers about what we have heard in the various plenaries we attended.
One talk today I am still mulling around in my head: how to avoid making bad decisions in the future.
Who does not know this situation: you are stuck between a rock and a hard place, at work or in your private life. You have no idea what to do and no idea what the right thing is. Can you accept the position you are in? Can you change it? Can you only solve the situation by totally taking yourself out of this position, leaving? And how are you supposed to know?
A young, very spirited man from Bulgaria that gave this inspiring pitch suggested to gather information first, as much as you can from different sources. His introductory words resonated with me because by information he meant hard facts but also emotions and hopes and fears. Explicit vs implicit information are the terms he used.
He then continued in his energetic way by stating the data gathered had to be analyzed, according to individual needs and personalities.
When the audience criticised that in today’s society there is too much information, too much irrelevant data for this to be successful, he agreed. Yet by deciding what was relevant or not, the analysis has started already, and individual preferences would help furthermore.
His talk was concluded, no surprise there, when he said that now that we had gathered and analysed sufficient data, we could make a decision and decide what to do.
Interestingly, his last point was: you can decide not to act on the information you gathered. It is still a different state doing nothing because you decided it was the best option on the basis of knowledge instead of on a lack thereof.
How bad could the decision then be?
If only it were this simple. 🙂
Cara`s Melody 