Stop Dithering and Start Deciding

Can you make a decision?

In the mid 1950’s Ruth Handler, the owner of a small toy company in Southern California received a phone call. The man on the line explained that ABC-TV (barely seven years old) was launching a new show for kids, and looking for a sponsor. He thought Ruth’s company would be perfect. All she had to do was commit to 52 weeks of sponsorship for $500,000.

It was an enticing offer except for one teensy, little fact: $500K was the equivalent of Ruth’s entire net worth. “I’ll get back to you,” Ruth said.

The process Ruth Handler went through to make her decision is a perfect prototype for making smarter decisions faster in every area of life and work.

First, Ruth checked her company’s Decision Pulse. She grabbed her husband and co-owner, Elliot, and they discussed what gave their company its competitive advantage (Low prices? High quality? Good marketing? Great customer service?) Some of their competitors cranked out a steady supply of new toys, or surpassed the Handlers in other categories. But Ruth and Elliot were top notch marketers. So if they were going to take a risk, then a marketing risk was the smartest risk and TV advertising was exactly that. Check.

Secondly, Ruth walked into the office of her Chief Financial Officer, Yas Yashida to ask what would happen if they decided to sponsor the show, and it failed to generate more business. This step is what we call "consulting the anti-you" and its sole purpose is to prevent from stumbling into irrational thinking traps.

A few years ago, University of Pennsylvania researcher Katherine Milkman and her colleagues Dolly Chugh and Max Bazerman summed up the best-tested strategies for sidestepping our intuitive biases. These strategies include things like “take an outsider’s perspective,” and “consider the opposite,” which force you to view the world in a way that isn't so tainted by your emotions and knee-jerk reactions. “Consult the anti-you” is a catch-all term that reminds us to apply some version of these horizon-broadening strategies before making a decision.

“Well,” Yashida said, “we won’t be broke, but we’ll be very badly bent.”

At this point, there was only one thing left for Ruth and Elliot to do—just decide. In 1955, there was no historical data on TV advertising. No other toy company had ever advertised on TV so they couldn’t benchmark anyone. It was time to put a fork in the research phase.

Now, here’s the rub: Deciding to do the sponsorship meant putting their young family’s financial security on the line, not to mention the company’s future. It would also put a serious dent in the company’s cash flow, and prevent further investments in factory upgrades, employee bonuses, toy development, and all sorts of other good uses for their money.

On the other hand, deciding not to sponsor the new show meant passing up on a potential breakthrough opportunity. No matter which choice she made, Ruth was going to have to give up something. .

So, what did Ruth do?

In less time than it takes most us to decide where to eat lunch, Ruth Handler called back the ad man to tell him they were “in” on the sponsorship. As luck would have it, the new TV show turned out to be The Mickey Mouse Club and Ruth’s company became the toy giant we now know as Mattel.

Following this process was merely an unconscious intuition for Ruth Handler. But checking your pulse, consulting the anti-you, and just deciding are the three critical steps anyone can take to arrive at smarter decisions faster. The real beauty of it is that it doesn't require any special traits or unique skill sets.

So even though we discovered in Why Quitters Win, that some people have an advantage when it comes to making decisive progress, anyone can practice a process that achieves the same ends. What it does require is persistent effort to make it a habit. And try though we may, that kind of effort often requires some gentle, and sometimes not-so-gentle pressure from the outside world. That's what we'll cover in the next article.