That rattling sound is your Q4

Photo by YUSUF ARSLAN.

The rattling started a few weeks ago. Maybe one of the kids left a rear window slightly open? Hmm, not that. OK, maybe some panelling came loose? Nope, not that either. Something rolling in the trunk? Or under the hood? What is that noise?

Up in Toronto it's almost fall. We're in the jeans plus a hoodie, cool mornings and warm evenings phase of the year. The leaves are doing that lovely hint of yellows at the edges thing. As the squirrels frantically work on nut preservation like their Q3 bonuses depend on it.

And that persistent rattling? Well, some enterprising young squirrel hid a walnut in the front of our car. Every time we turned or changed lanes at highway speeds, it would roll from side to side.

It's hard to blame the squirrels. They already know. We're not far off from the first freeze and we're still many months from the last freeze. Best to store as much up as you can, while you can.

Humans aren't squirrels but damn if we aren't all in a similar frame of mind at the moment. In our personal lives, we pile up the hugs and dinners and reunions, storing them away to get us through whatever comes next. At work, where we used to have competing priorities, we now have abundant priorities. A professional landscape, littered with walnuts, demanding urgent attention. And when everything looks like a walnut, well, it's no wonder so many workplaces feel frantic.

Any decision in a storm

In a field of walnuts, the biggest problem facing organizations is decision-making. And bosses, this is on us.

There's an adage in business that any decision is better than no decision. Because even if you're wrong, you can always make a different decision further down the road. It's not a blank cheque to make awful calls – some decisions make things worse than waiting would have. But standing still and waiting for clarity that may or may not ever show up? That's rarely the right call, either.

Look, we're not pretending it's easy. The rotating screensaver of disasters right now makes every decision feel overwhelming. And most of us don't have the information we need. But "no decision" – leaving all those walnuts just lying on the ground to rot. That's a decision of its own, and it's usually a bad one.

So if making bad, rash calls doesn't work. And punting the decision entirely isn't an option, what are leaders supposed to do?

Sidebar: Maximizers and Satisficers

In The Paradox of Choice, Barry Schwartz talks about the psychology of decision making. Especially decision making when there are too many options. He talks about how most people fall on a continuum between Maximizers and Satisficers.

A Maximizer looks for the Best decision. They research extensively, evaluate every option in detail, in an attempt to identify the correct choice. Satisficers, by contrast, are looking for an Acceptable decision. They can have very high standards for what constitutes acceptable. It's not that they're settling for something crappier, or just don't care as much as Maximizers. But once they've established what matters to them, they can take the first option that meets those criteria. They are looking for a good choice.

A good thing to do right now is to stop and ask where you see yourself on that spectrum. You already know which one you were nodding along with.

And the reason it's good to know that about yourself is that these are not equally good strategies. Across a range of domains, Satisficers are quicker to make decisions and happier with the decisions they make. Maximizers are more likely to experience anxiety before a choice and regret afterwards. And even in the cases where the "goodness" of a decision can be objectively measured, Maximizers don't do any better.

Knowing what matters, and constraining the field of decisions, helps.

Okay back to the walnuts

There are three more months where you can get anything done this year. Q4 is really only a 2/3 quarter at best, and if you do anything related to retail you're about to be underwater and you know it.

A thing effective leaders know is that every team goes faster when the path is clear. Making good, clear decisions is one of the best things you can do as a leader to help your team move. The progress you will make for the rest of this year is down to the decisions you make in the next few weeks.

So what are they? What are the decisions that your team is waiting for? When we talk with leaders, they can usually rattle off the list. Which projects need to wrap up this year? And which projects are we killing to make the space we need to get those done? Are we doubling down on the new thing or still maintaining the legacy one? Are we gonna push the launch out to the spring? Are we getting that headcount, doing that re-org, firing that person? Or not?

You will not get your team the clarity they need by maximizing. None of us has the time or the mental energy to fully analyze each option to its endgame. And even if we did that's a bad way to make decisions.

But we have moments. We have these little windows where we have a walnut and need to decide where to put it. And if you can help us get to clarity on that question, we can move on to the next and the next. And store up enough of these to make it through the winter that's coming.

- Melissa and Johnathan