Scenario paralysis: are you a victim?
A little while back I quoted Michael Bloomberg on how he built his eponymous business:
“We made mistakes, of course. Most of them were omissions we didn’t think of when we initially wrote the software. We fixed them by doing it over and over, again and again. We do the same today. While our competitors are still sucking their thumbs trying to make the design perfect, we’re already on prototype version #5. By the time our rivals are ready with wires and screws, we are on version #10. It gets back to planning versus acting: We act from day one; others plan how to plan — for months.”
Are you a victim of planning how to plan for months on end? Years, maybe? (Or even your whole career so far? Be honest with yourself.) A friend of mine has called this “scenario paralysis” — the trap we fall into when we imagine all kinds of possible future scenarios . . . and thereby get stuck.
Why do we get stuck? I think it’s because we’re sooooooo freakin’ smart that we imagine that we can look into the future accurately, even though a backward glance across our lives would tend to disprove that.
We overanalyze because we think our highly-trained rational minds can dig us out of holes that are created by non-rational forces. Or, to put it another way, we don’t know how to come to grips with the emotional challenges we face in business, so we fall back on something we know we’re good at — rational analysis — even though it’s not the right tool for the problem at hand.
What’s the #1 non-rational/emotional force? My bet’s on plain old fear.
We don’t want to venture into the unknown; we don’t want to go through the sorts of mistakes that Bloomberg’s crew made. It’s a heck of a lot more comfortable to do another flowchart or hold another planning meeting instead, especially if you work in a corporate culture that responds poorly to mistakes or otherwise prizes “rightness.”
Now, dear readers, I turn it over to you:
- Do you suffer from scenario paralysis?
- What do you suggest for fighting it?
~
(Image by psd.)
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I absolutely agree with this analysis. I spent last Monday counselling a friend on this same issue (after going through this myself much too much recently). We create abject scenarios in our minds that paralyse us from moving forward, and in my friend’s case, identifying what was really important to her in her business. After deconstructing her fear (creativity often begets fear and paranoia) she realised that her goals were being set in desperation to avoid scenarios, rather than visualising potentialities that suited her interests.
My way of fighting this is to (literally) take a page from my client Eckhart Tolle’s book and try to be present in the now. It’s not easy, but I’m trying to learn focus. I’ve told my friend that she is no longer allowed to write lists, whch overwhelm her with negative possibilities.