Some Business Problems Don’t Need a Meeting

Spending some time in South Carolina, and I had a random thought about business that I think a lot of owners could benefit from.

We talk too much.

Not socially. I mean inside our companies.

Something goes wrong and we schedule a meeting. Somebody has an idea and we schedule a meeting. A customer complains and suddenly five people are on a call discussing what happened.

As companies grow, communication is obviously important. But somewhere along the way, communication can become a substitute for actually making a decision.

And there is a huge difference between the two.

I started thinking about how many problems in business could probably be solved with one person saying:

“Here's what we're going to do.”

Then doing it.

Not everything needs consensus.

Not everything needs another email chain.

Not everything needs to be “circled back” on next Tuesday.

Sometimes somebody simply needs to own the decision.

The 10-Minute Rule

Here's something worth trying.

If a problem can be reversed relatively easily and the downside of making the wrong decision is small, give the person responsible 10 minutes to decide.

That's it.

Choose.

Move.

See what happens.

If they're wrong, correct it.

I've realized that businesses sometimes spend $1,000 worth of people's time trying to avoid making a $200 mistake.

Four employees sit in a meeting for an hour discussing something that could have simply been tested.

That isn't being careful.

That's expensive hesitation.

And the bigger your company becomes, the easier it is for hesitation to disguise itself as professionalism.

Some Decisions Deserve More Time

Obviously, I'm not suggesting you make major legal, financial, hiring or contractual decisions in ten minutes.

Some decisions are difficult to reverse.

Those deserve patience.

But that's actually the distinction more businesses should make.

I think about decisions as either one-way doors or two-way doors.

A one-way door is difficult or expensive to reverse.

Signing a major lease. Hiring a senior executive. Acquiring a company. Entering a serious long-term obligation.

Slow down.

A two-way door is easy to walk back through.

Trying a new landing page. Changing the way a meeting is structured. Testing a different sales script. Moving a small amount of advertising budget.

Walk through the door.

See what's on the other side.

You can always come back.

Speed Has a Compounding Effect

The interesting thing about faster decisions isn't the few hours you save.

It's how many additional attempts you get.

Imagine two companies have the same idea on January 1.

Company A spends six weeks discussing it, refining it and getting everyone comfortable.

Company B launches a small version in seven days.

It doesn't work perfectly.

So they change it.

Then they try again.

By the time Company A launches version one, Company B might already be on version four.

That's a massive advantage.

Not because Company B is smarter.

They simply learned faster.

I've become convinced that one of the most underrated competitive advantages in business is how quickly your company can discover that it's wrong.

Everybody wants to be right.

I'd rather find out I'm wrong on Tuesday than six months from now.

This Also Changes How You Hire

I used to think one of the most important things you could hire for was someone who knew what to do.

I still value that.

But I've come to appreciate people who can figure out what to do when nobody has given them instructions.

That's different.

You can give two employees the same problem.

One comes back with five questions.

The other comes back and says:

“Here's what happened. Here's what I think caused it. Here's what I recommend. Unless you disagree, I'm going to handle it this way.”

That second person is incredibly valuable.

They're not just completing tasks.

They're reducing the amount of thinking the organization has to push back onto leadership.

And as an owner, that's what you eventually need.

You don't need more people bringing you problems.

You need people who can bring you judgment.

There's a Cost to Waiting That Doesn't Show Up in QuickBooks

This is probably the part business owners underestimate most.

We calculate the cost of making a bad decision.

We rarely calculate the cost of making no decision.

The customer who waited.

The employee who couldn't move forward.

The opportunity that disappeared.

The advertising campaign that never launched.

The candidate who accepted another job.

The month you spent thinking about something your competitor simply tried.

Those costs are difficult to see because you never receive an invoice for them.

But they're real.

I've learned that sometimes the more successful you become, the more careful you become because now there's actually something to protect.

That's understandable.

But I don't ever want protecting what we've built to make us afraid to continue building.

There's a balance.

Be careful with the decisions that can seriously hurt you.

Move quickly on the ones that can't.

And give good people enough room to make decisions without constantly looking over their shoulder.

That's really the whole lesson.

South Carolina didn't give me some giant business revelation.

It just gave me enough distance from the normal day-to-day to think about something simple:

Maybe the next problem that comes across your desk doesn't need another meeting.

Maybe it just needs a decision.

Make it.

See what happens.

Keep moving.

Writing from South Carolina.

— Corey Flores
Founder, Flores Marketing Firm