In my years of life as an employee, entrepreneur, consultant and life coach, I have observed that the biggest challenge to career growth is… not knowing what to do… quite literally. When faced with a high stakes decision, some people are sucked by the quicksand of indecision. Making a decision involves taking responsibility for outcomes. What if I am wrong? This is the most paralyzing affliction in modern life. Earlier, it was easy, we just had to do what we are told and the gears of society/culture would lock-in and convert that into something. But as Durkheim would put it, anomie leads to ennui and in a society where old norms have fallen and new are yet to evolve it’s hard to know what to do.
In Business Schools the hardest topic to teach is ethics. That’s because it does not go with the basic premise of management education – how to make more money. Unlike finance, hr, marketing etc., learning ethics will not teach you how to make more money. Ethics is not about How to do anything it’s about What to do. I call this the Ethical Imperative. We behave ethically because it’s the right thing to do, that’s it.
So next time you find yourself in the quicksand of indecision, remember this….
Not making a decision is far worse than making the wrong one. Not deciding does not absolve you from all responsibility about the outcome. That is a decision too.