Sleep on it! Better decision making

Bite sized leadership advice

Sleep on it.

Tough decisions and difficult problems to solve always seem better in the morning, once your System 2 brain has had a chance to work on them.

Factor a sleep into your decision-making process.

If you pressurise a decision maker in a single meeting there is a greater risk that the decision feels too hard, leaving the decision maker to delegate (to others), defer (ask for more information and/or time) or become defensive.

If you have ever been asked for ‘more information’, information that you know is not needed for the decision to be made, you haven’t been asked for information, but time. Don’t waste your teams effort pulling together the additional information, just give the time.

We all need time to think things through and come to an opinion. Time allows us to come to the best decision we can.

If you are working to persuade others in your organisation to make decisions, especially those that are feeling under pressure or that the decision carries risk, plan for a sleep between the briefing and the decision.

Lay out the facts and the choices, with their consequences. Answer questions, then pause.

The following day reconvene to make the decision.

Giving time takes the pressure off the decision maker allowing them to weight up the options.

Sleep is a great tonic. Sleep on it to get to better decision making.

This is part of our Leadership Wizdom series, bite sized leadership advice for leaders who wish to improve their leadership, but don’t have much time. For more indepth articles check out The Change Wizard