The conventional wisdom says that faster decisions mean worse decisions. Take your time, gather more data, consult more people. But research on high-performing organizations reveals something counterintuitive: the fastest decision-makers often make the best decisions.
The Speed-Quality Paradox
Kathleen Eisenhardt's research on Silicon Valley firms found that companies making faster strategic decisions outperformed slower competitors on both speed and quality. This was not because they were reckless -- they had developed systems and habits that made fast, good decisions possible.
The decision-making scenarios at KeepRule help you develop the pattern recognition and frameworks that enable faster, better decisions.
Why Fast Can Be Better
Information decay: In dynamic environments, information loses value quickly. A decision made today with current information may be better than a decision made next month with slightly more but older information.
Learning speed: Fast decisions generate feedback faster. Each decision is an experiment, and faster experiments mean faster learning. Over a year, an organization making weekly decisions has 52 data points; one making monthly decisions has 12.
Momentum: Speed creates organizational momentum that improves execution. Teams executing a good-enough decision with energy outperform teams executing a perfect decision with exhaustion.
Opportunity capture: Many opportunities have windows that close. The value of a decision often depends more on its timing than its precision.
What Enables Decision Velocity
The core principles of high-velocity decision-making include several enabling practices:
Real-time information: Fast decision-makers do not wait for reports. They have dashboards, direct customer access, and frontline feedback loops that provide current information continuously.
Parallel processing: Instead of sequential analysis (research, then discuss, then decide), fast decision-makers do these simultaneously. They discuss while researching and decide while discussing.
Experienced intuition: Speed requires pattern recognition, which comes from experience. Fast decision-makers have typically made many similar decisions before and can quickly recognize which patterns apply.
Clear decision rights: When everyone knows who decides what, there is no time wasted on authority negotiation. The decision-maker is identified before the decision arises.
Acceptable failure tolerance: Fast decision-makers accept that some decisions will be wrong and have systems for quick correction. This tolerance removes the perfectionism that slows decisions.
The 70% Rule
A useful heuristic: make the decision when you have about 70% of the information you wish you had. Below 70%, you are guessing. Above 70%, you are likely overthinking. The marginal value of additional information drops sharply after this threshold while the cost of delay continues to increase.
The decision masters developed an intuitive feel for this threshold through experience. They knew when they had "enough" information and acted accordingly.
Increasing Your Decision Velocity
Identify your bottleneck: Is it information gathering, analysis, authority, or confidence? Each bottleneck requires a different solution.
Set decision deadlines: For every decision, set a time limit proportional to its reversibility and importance. Force yourself to decide within that limit.
Practice with low-stakes decisions: Build your fast-decision muscles on reversible, low-consequence choices. The skills transfer to higher-stakes situations.
Conduct speed retrospectives: After each decision, ask whether you could have decided faster without materially worse outcomes. Usually the answer is yes.
For more on optimizing decision processes, visit the KeepRule blog and the FAQ.
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