Leo’s 80/30 rule on indecisiveness and inertia
One of the most frustrating things in academia is the lack of a common sense about the line between the time for discussion and the time for action and implementation.
There is a tendency to get drawn into endless discussions about ideas (usually half-baked), principles, and conceptual issues while the problem at hand requires a practical consideration, a convergence to a few action items, and execution of some implementation, followed by reevaluation and whatever additional or corrective steps are necessary.
Sitting around a table with brilliant, accomplished intellectuals is a temptation to get drawn into these endless discussions. They are wonderful sessions full with deep thoughts and interesting observations but very little outcome in terms of results. The worst question one could ask at the end of such meeting is “so, what should we do next”. The initial “uhms” and “ehs” are typically followed by a unanimous agreement to schedule a followup meeting. Then repeat.
A colleague recently sent me the following complaint:
I was asked to teach a particular course for the first time. I wrote to faculty colleagues who had an interest in the coure or have taught relevant courses in the past, to discuss methodology, ideas, textbooks, etc. After a month of good and solid discussions I made my decisions about the outline for the course and the textbook. As a courtesy to those who offered their time to discuss the course with me, I sent them an email with the course information. Immediately I was flooded with friendly but unsolicited suggestions about different textbooks, changes in the outline, etc. The subject header of my email read “FYI”. Some of the emails came from senior people in my department and I feel under pressure to adopt their recommendations.
I advised my friend to stick with his decision. It’s his course. “Why don’t you speak about this with your Department Head”, I wrote back. “He was the first to offer unsolicited advise for changes” was the reply from my friend. End of discussion: here’s a department head who cannot sense the boundary between discussion and decision. There is nothing to do than stick with your own decision and pull it through.
It is very difficult indeed to see the “fine” line between discussion and decision. My experience is that we continue the discussion ad naseum perhaps as a defense mechanism against decision making. It is as if academics are afraid of making mistakes in the decision process. Mistakes happen. Mistakes are the consequence of our fallible nature. The biggest mistake is not to make a timely decision and follow through with a timely execution.
My objective, going into a meeting is to achieve some sort of concensus in what amounts to about 80% of an action plan within the first half hour. I can formulate an implementation on that and there will be little objection about it since it reflects what we actually discussed at a meeting. Then we are free to spend the rest of the meeting’s time in discussing the deep intellectual impact and the conceptual premises of whatever is on the agenda.
Hence my 80-30 rule refers to deriving 80% of an action plan within the first 30 minutes of a meeting.
