In his 2016 Shareholder Letter, Jeff Bezos had this quote:

“If you wait for 90% [of the information you need], in most cases, you’re probably being slow.”

Information is a snapshot in time. It is snowing outside. That is past information; it may or may not still be accurate five minutes after I say it’s snowing outside. We’re now almost nine years from when Jeff Bezos had the quote above, and it couldn’t be more relevant.

Everything in the future is uncertain. We use models, predictions, and hypotheses to make the best decision that can shape our future toward more certainty. Leaders are constantly forced to make decisions without 100% of the information they need.

Waiting for more data is acceptable in some cases. But in other instances, action is required immediately. Here are three tactics you can use to help make better decisions without all the facts.

Anchor your decisions in core principles.

Here’s one principle I rely on when making personnel decisions or determining whether someone has been meeting expectations. I always assume employees give their best effort. I’ll never make a decision based on the assumption that an employee is being lazy; I will assume they lack training (my responsibility) and provide them with additional training before I start disciplinary action. I don’t know whether they’re undertrained or not, but if I’m going to make a decision without all the information, that’s the assumption I want to guide my actions.

You can develop your own principles to guide your decision-making, grounded in your beliefs and your organization’s philosophy. You want to create consistent criteria to help you make reliable decisions that your team can understand. You never want to treat two similar situations completely differently as a leader.

Determine whether you can recover from the worst-case scenario.

There are two types of decisions, elaborated on by Jeff Bezos in his 2015 Shareholder Letter. Those are decisions you can make and reverse relatively easily, and decisions that are irreversible once you choose to act. You should look at every decision you’re faced with and determine the worst-case scenario to decide whether you can recover from it. For example, you have wild success with a product launch, but you can’t ship all the product by the deadline. You assess the situation and realize you can’t commit to the launch until you increase your production volume by 20%.

Performing a simple risk assessment like this can help you feel more confident and comfortable making decisions without all the information. After all, you know the worst that could happen and whether you can recover from that.

Determine the cost of waiting.

If I decide not to act right now, what opportunity cost would I incur? If I choose to push our new product launch back by 6 weeks, I will miss out on 500 potential leads who plan to attend two live webinars over the next 6 weeks. You need to understand if that value is worth the risk of running into your worst-case scenario. Sometimes you have to take a gamble because waiting is just not an option.

When waiting is not feasible, rely on your core principles to make a decision and prepare for any negative consequences. Leaders are faced with decisions all day long, and if a decision can wait without consequence, prioritize more critical matters.

When you understand the risks of acting and the potential costs of not acting, combined with your guiding principles, you can start to assess what decision makes the most sense.

Leaders run into decision paralysis when they lack a proper framework to ruminate on and eventually justify their decision. These three simple tactics can help you make better decisions without waiting for more information (which will likely be outdated by the time you get it anyway).

Until next time,

Rick