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Is it better to act or not to act. To speak or remain silent. To settle or resist. To proceed or wait.
Shakespeare framed the dilemma more memorably than most.
To be or not to be, that is the question.
In Hamlet, indecision is not born from ignorance. It arises from an acute awareness of consequence. Hamlet understands that action carries risk and, accordingly, repeatedly returns to thought in search of certainty. Nietzsche later captured the danger with the proposition that knowledge kills action.
Analysis paralysis
Modern organisations know the condition by another name. Analysis paralysis.
A board requests another report. Management seeks another opinion. A further meeting is scheduled because greater information appears likely to produce a better decision. Each step may be rational when viewed in isolation. Considered cumulatively, however, the pursuit of certainty can become the very reason why no decision is made.
Therein lies the strategic difficulty. Delay feels different from decision because it does not announce itself as one. Nothing appears to have been surrendered and the available options seem to remain intact. However, time does not stand still merely because the decision maker does.
- Circumstances change.
- Leverage moves.
- Other parties act.
- Opportunities narrow.
- Perceptions form.
The cost of indecision is rarely the absence of movement. It is movement occurring without you.
Decision delay and option decay
The commercial world offers a useful illustration. Ambroise Vollard, the celebrated French art dealer associated with Cézanne and other major artists, was known for controlling the options available to prospective buyers. A customer might be shown several desirable works and leave without deciding. Upon returning, the paintings offered could be less attractive. Further hesitation could produce weaker options still.
The buyer believed that the decision remained open.
The options did not necessarily remain the same.
Decision delay can produce option decay.
That principle extends considerably beyond the sale of art.
- An offer expires.
- A counterparty finds another buyer.
- A talented employee accepts another role.
- Financing becomes more expensive.
- A settlement opportunity disappears.
Management may believe it is preserving choice by waiting when, in reality, the available choices are being altered by time, circumstance and the conduct of others.
It follows that a decision not to resolve a matter today is still a decision about what happens to that matter in the meantime.
Normandy, June 1944
History provides a more dramatic example.
In the months preceding the Allied landings in Normandy in June 1944, Operation Fortitude (opens in a new tab) was designed to reinforce German expectations that the principal invasion would fall at Pas de Calais. A fictitious army was constructed around General George Patton, supported by false radio traffic, dummy equipment and a wider deception operation intended to preserve uncertainty as to where the decisive attack would come.
Even after Allied forces landed in Normandy, substantial German forces remained positioned around Calais because the possibility of a second and larger invasion continued to appear credible.
The significance lies not merely in the fact that German command was deceived. It lies in what that deception caused it not to do. Delay appeared to preserve defensive options while the battlefield in Normandy continued to change.
The decision had been postponed. The consequence had not.
That is the uncomfortable feature of non resolution. The absence of a decision does not suspend the consequences against which the decision was required.
Settlement is not resolution
A different version of the same principle confronted Julius Caesar more than two thousand years earlier.
In 48 BCE, Caesar arrived in Egypt amid the struggle between Cleopatra VII and her younger brother Ptolemy XIII. The dispute appeared capable of settlement. Joint rule could be restored. Titles could be recognised. Ptolemy could even be released in the hope that accommodation might thereafter follow.
The difficulty was that each measure addressed an immediate manifestation of the dispute without necessarily resolving the struggle beneath it.
Therein lies the distinction between settlement and resolution.
A settlement may determine what happens next. Resolution requires something more. It requires an appreciation of whether the condition capable of reproducing the dispute has itself been addressed, contained or consciously accepted.
That distinction matters commercially because organisations frequently mistake the easing of immediate pressure for resolution of the underlying problem. A complaint is settled. A payment is made. A contractual concession is granted. Management moves on.
However, where the condition which produced the dispute remains, the organisation may merely have resolved its latest manifestation.
Where nothing is done
The same principle applies where nothing is done.
Suppose an SME receives a serious complaint from an important customer. Management considers the allegation overstated and decides not to engage substantively for the time being. Superficially, nothing changes that afternoon.
In reality, the bargaining environment has already begun to move. The customer reconsiders the relationship. Other people become involved. Advisers may be instructed. Positions harden. What began as dissatisfaction with one transaction may thereafter become dissatisfaction with the organisation itself.
The original problem has not remained where it was left.
It has acquired additional characteristics.
The consequence of not acting
Accordingly, the strategic inquiry cannot simply be whether there is sufficient information to act today. It must also consider the consequence of not acting.
- Will the other party’s alternatives improve.
- Will ours deteriorate.
- Will the relationship survive.
- Will the opportunity which exists today still exist once greater certainty arrives.
Those questions are not incidental to the decision. They form part of it.
Delay and drift
None of this means that immediate action is invariably preferable. Such a proposition would be commercially naïve. Delay may be entirely rational. Facts may remain incomplete. The opposing party’s position may weaken with time. Premature communication may create unnecessary exposure. Settlement may establish an undesirable precedent.
But deliberate non action and strategic indecision are not the same thing.
Delay can be a strategy. Drift cannot.
The distinction lies in whether the consequences of waiting have themselves been considered.
A sophisticated business should therefore ask more than whether it ought to act. It should ask what it is choosing if it does not.
A resolution not to resolve
That is the principle upon which this article turns.
No resolution is not the absence of a resolution. It is, in itself, a resolution not to resolve.
Time will continue to alter the problem. Perception will alter it. Behaviour will alter it. Leverage will alter it. Thereafter, circumstances may resolve the matter on terms which the decision maker would never consciously have chosen.
The question is therefore not merely whether to act.
It is whether, by refusing to decide, you are allowing time, circumstance and other actors to make the decision for you.
Key points
- Decision delay can produce option decay.
- The absence of a decision does not suspend the consequences against which the decision was required.
- Delay can be a strategy. Drift cannot.
Rodney Jack BL
Founder, RJ Strategic Advisory
Rodney's background in law, business, cyber-risk and compliance informs RJSA's approach to governance, data risk, communications and crisis response. About the founder
RJ Strategic Advisory, Strategic Positioning, Crisis Management and Confidential Resolution Strategy
Content published on RJSA Review is for general information and commentary only. It does not constitute legal, regulatory, financial, HR, cyber-security or other professional advice.
