I once saw a man in New York City crossing the street.
Suddenly, the man heard a car engine approaching quickly and rather than hurry on across, he halted, seeming to freeze, in the middle of the street. The man’s arms stretched out with one hand towards the side he had been moving towards and the other hand pointing back the way he had come. His face was a mask of fear, looking at the car bearing down on him.
Time seemed to slow down as his indecision caused him to shift his upper-body first towards one side of the street and then the towards the other.
The car started breaking to slow its speed.
Finally, the man’s indecision snapped and he made a decision and ran across the street the way he had been going.
What was going on in his head during that moment torn between two directions?
Was it only fear that seemed to wipe away his ability to quickly decide a direction and quickly get out of the street?
The cost of delay for this man could have been his health or his life.
Not every decision has such high stakes, but delay always has a cost.
We have to make a choice in time to matter.
Recalling that story now, brings to mind a question asked of indecisive people in ancient Israel.
Elijah came unto all the people, and said, How long halt ye between two opinions?
Many organizations need leaders who are able and willing to act decisively.
Decisive leaders have the ability to balance the costs of continuing to gather information, and deliberate versus the costs of making poor choices.
The potential cost of rashness or hastiness when time allows more consideration must be weighed against the cost of delay.
What is the cost of delay?
Donald G. Reinertsen has written much on the cost of delay in the context of product development, yet his concept applies to many contexts.
Reinertsen’s framework basically says that the Cost of Delay is a way of communicating the impact of time on the outcomes we hope to achieve. More formally, it is the partial derivative of the total expected value with respect to time.
How much time spent on decisions is a dynamic balance.
He does not always choose the best who muses long.
~Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Cost of Delay combines urgency and value – two things that humans are not typically good at distinguishing between.
To make decisions, we need to understand not just how valuable something is, but how urgent it is.
Urgency is another way of saying time criticality.
Cost of Delay = Time Criticality + Stakeholder Value + (Risk Reduction + Opportunity Enablement Value)
Cost of Delay represents the economic impact of a delay in results.
Whether those results are crossing a street in New York, or winning a battle, or deliverables in a critical project, the cost of delay idea constrains decision making cycle time and can help prioritize the order of work.
Cost of Delay combines urgency and value – two things that humans are not typically good at distinguishing between. To make decisions, we need to understand not just how valuable something is, but how urgent it is. ^[See the book The Principles of Product Development Flow: Second Generation Lean Product Development, by Donald G Reinertsen and his Weighted Shortest Job First (WSJF) approach at https://www.amazon.com/Principles-Product-Development-Flow-Generation-ebook/dp/B00K7OWG7O/ref=sr_1_3?dchild=1&keywords=The+Principles+of+Product+Development+Flow%3A+Second+Generation+Lean+Product+Development&qid=1619774892&s=digital-text&sr=1-3]
Urgency is another way of saying time criticality.
Cost of Delay = Time Criticality + Stakeholder Value + (Risk Reduction + Opportunity Enablement Value)
The context may put a higher urgency and value on decisiveness. For example, the U.S. Military needs decisive leaders at all levels because their counterparts in opposing nations are deciding too. In the military context, leaders often have to make decisions based on limited information and time. To delay too long may be to lose the engagement, the battle or the war. The cost could be existential in a military context. So for the military, their time criticality is high, military member value is high, risk reduction is high and opportunity enablement is high. All of this makes the cost of delay in a military context high.
A good plan, violently executed now, is better than a perfect plan next week.
~General George Patton
To identify the priority of work, Reinertsen recommends the Weighted Shortest Job First (WSJF) approach.
WSJF = Cost of delay / job size
It may help to use a modified Fibonacci Scale for values to calculate WSJF.
The percentage of mistakes in quick decisions is no greater than in long-drawn-out vacillations, and the effect of decisiveness itself makes things go and creates confidence.
~ Anne O’Hare McCormick