Kotaku has a great article up about the troubled development of Anthem, a new role playing game from BioWare and EA. Even if you’re not a gamer, it’s a worthwhile read, if only as a cautionary tale of where design and execution can go horribly awry.
But one of the biggest lessons I took away from this article was around decision making, or rather the lack of it.
Some people disagree on the fundamentals. And then, rather than someone stepping up and making a decision about how to proceed, the meeting would end with no real verdict, leaving everything in flux. “That would just happen over and over,” said one Anthem developer. “Stuff would take a year or two to figure out because no one really wanted to make a call on it.”
It’s easy, especially in an operations and process oriented role like marketing technology, to strive for perfection. To maximize efficiency. But when I look back on some of the biggest failings in my career, they were when I waited around too long for the perfect option to make a decision on.
“Make good decisions” is certainly the goal, but we tend to focus too much on the “good” part of the equation, and less on the “making” part of the process. Often forward action and committing on a course is better, even if that course hasn’t been verified as the most optimal, than making no movement at all.
There are very few actions in business or in life that can’t be reversed if they truly go sour. But failing to take action at all has even worse odds of success.