Should I or Shouldn’t I?

As I was reading this blog by Dave Girouard in First Round Review (Read the full article here), it brought to mind how important making decisions and making them quickly are to growing your business. All too often I meet business owners who just can’t seem to make a decision for fear that whatever decision they make, it will just not be the absolutely perfect or right decision to make. What they miss according to Mr. Girouard and I wholeheartedly agree with him, is that speed can be the ultimate weapon in business for beating one’s competition, whether you are delivering a product to market, or promoting the value proposition of your services.

As usual, these articles are long, and are worth reading. However, if your time is limited, here are some take-aways worth considering:

• Deciding on when a decision will be made from the start is a profound, powerful change that will speed everything up.
• To keep things moving, ask a lot of hard time related questions very quickly.
• Speed, like exercise and eating healthy, can be habitual.
• A good plan executed now is better than a perfect plan later.
• You can either set the pace of the market or be the one to react. Whoever is fastest out of the gate is the one everyone else has to react to.
• Always challenge why something takes a certain amount of time. Is your company or team working as smartly as it can?
• Too many people believe that speed is the enemy of quality. On the other hand, if you use it appropriately, it can be your most important competitive advantage.