Why decision-makers hesitate › Worries, fears, distress
Worries, fears, distress: what decision-makers want to get away from
The ‘away from’ is the part of a decision hardly anyone talks about, and yet it is the part that decides most often. The greater the responsibility, the stronger its effect. It doesn’t show up as a no, but as a query, an analysis, a postponement.
The terms
Three words for what holds you back
Worry
What might happen
A worry concerns something that may happen in future, but need not. The good news: most worries never materialise. The difficult part: they influence what people do anyway, long before it is clear whether they were justified.
Fear
The urge to leave the situation
Fear is a protective reaction. It wants out of a situation that feels threatening. In organisations people rarely flee the room; they flee into postponement: one more review, one more round, one more figure.
Distress
The situation in which you need help
Distress is when someone is stuck in a difficult situation and can no longer find a way out on their own. At that point, judgement no longer works reliably. Someone in distress doesn’t need another proposal; they need clarity from outside.
The observation
The higher the level, the more the ‘away from’ dominates
At working level, the ‘towards’ is strong: people want to deliver and make progress. The higher someone sits in the hierarchy, the more that reverses. More is at stake, personally and for the institution. Every decision is more visible, every mistake more expensive. When in doubt, worries, fears and distress win.
The pattern is always similar. A proposal is run through the same filter: what can go wrong? That becomes a question, the question becomes a demand for more data, and the data leads to the next question. Still no decision is made. The decision takes longer, the people involved start to hesitate, and hesitation becomes a habit.
From practice
A sales channel that got stuck on queries
A bank was to build a new sales channel. The groundwork was thorough: the technical framework, the target customers, a financial projection of the commercial success. Everything was signed off and the project began.
Then came the questions. A few at first, then ever more detailed ones, many of them impossible for anyone to answer without the first operational results. Work in the market led to changes in IT, as is normal in a live project. That triggered budget questions. Soon there were more questions than answers.
The consequences fed into each other. IT made no progress because new requirements constantly had to be assessed. Customer acquisition stalled because nobody could say when the solution would go live. And the questions kept coming from the very top. Two members of the executive board kept escalating against each other. In the end, as I saw it, it was hardly about the project any more, but about who had the last word.
Those who paid the price were the organisation and the people in it. Again and again they were confronted with questions they simply could not answer at that point. The result was chaos and demotivation. Keeping the team on board and still delivering was a Herculean task as a manager.
How to recognise it
Signs that the ‘away from’ is blocking a decision
Signal
The questions change, the decision doesn’t
Every meeting brings new queries, but no criterion for when a decision will be made.
Signal
Data is demanded that cannot exist yet
People ask for results that will only be available after the start. That is not a flaw in the proposal but a sign of an unspoken worry.
Signal
The proposal comes back for the third time
Little has changed in substance. All that has changed is how often it has been discussed.
Signal
It is about people, not the matter at hand
Questions are asked to stake out a position. Then no further analysis helps; what is needed is clarity on roles.
What helps
Deal with worries instead of supplying more data
1
Let the worry be voiced
Instead of the next figure, the question: what do you never want to go through? A worry that has been named can be safeguarded against. A hidden one comes back as a query.
2
Agree in advance what is enough
Before the proposal comes in, agree which information is sufficient for the decision. Anything demanded beyond that is postponement, not diligence.
3
Decide in stages
Instead of approving everything at once, a first stage with a clear checkpoint and stop criterion. That lowers the stakes for the fear and produces the operational data that was missing before.
4
Clarify the role, not the figure
When two decision-makers keep escalating with questions, the problem is not in the proposal. Then it has to be settled who decides and who advises.
One thing belongs with this: you take fears away, you don’t exploit them. Anyone who builds pressure through the other side’s fear may get a quick yes, but not a decision that holds.
Read on
The other direction
In the model:
Is one of your decisions stuck?
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The example from practice has been anonymised and reflects the author’s view. The ZPW-SAN model goes back to the author’s own book draft (2018/19). Image credit: AI-generated motif, edited. AI-assisted tools were used in creating this page; professional review and responsibility lie with the author. More under AI in client mandates.