Deciding to decide: How to end the agony of decision-making.

decisionRunning an online store involves constant decision-making and picking choices that may lead to irreversible consequences. There are so many factors to think of. However, you can’t afford to spend countless of hours thinking and analyzing. At some point, you need to decide to decide. In ecommerce, time waits for no one. Your competitors are forging ahead and your customers are buying from someone, the only question is who.

Reasons why some ecommerce entrepreneurs are struggling to make decisions:

  1. Still waiting for the perfect or right time.
  2. Lack of supporting data, or hesitant to take someone’s word for it, which is good.
  3. Scared to fail, so if they don’t make the decision, then they can’t make the wrong/incorrect one.
  4. They don’t know what the core problem/issue is.
  5. Putting too much weight on the first information they received, and so forgetting to pursue additional data in the process.
  6. Unable to validate own point of view, or lack of confidence.
  7. Overestimating the importance of opinion of people who oppose the idea.
  8. Relying too much on expert’s opinion or on what they have learned from formal school, not realizing that this may not apply to their situation.
  9. Unwilling to confront the issues early on, resulting to paralysis by analysis.

As an ecommerce consultant, I tell my clients that one of the hardest aspects is making choices with the information you have on hand. If you have evaluated all the facts available to you and have narrowed down your best courses of action, it is likely that the choice you made is the best one. Truthfully, you’ll never know anyway, so you need to make that decision and then make that decision right.

When you decide:

  • Just pick one business idea and get started.
  • Be passionate, enthusiastic and driven for whatever idea you picked.
  • Know that you are taking a risk and that it’s rare for a business idea to succeed at the first try. No one bats 100%, 100% of the times.
  • Understand that not all ideas are worth pursuing. It’s not about what you want to sell. It’s about what consumers want to buy.
  • Be willing to fail in the earliest stages of the process. Fail fast and fail quickly so that you can have a chance to forge forward. It’s better to find out that your idea sucks early before you invest a boat load of money. By time, typical entrepreneurs throw more money into something that is failing so that they can rationalize all the reasons why they made the decision in the first place.
  • Resist the urge to maintain the status quo, a business must grow or it will die. Identify what you are willing to do and what actions you’re willing to take so you can achieve your goals.
  • Know the difference between perseverance and passion. Passion is important, but what really count in the end are hard work and your knowledge. Hence, being passionate about your idea is not enough. You have to decide to actually work for it. Never stop learning.
  • Know that being indecisive will get you nowhere. Take time out from daily business work to think things out.

When deciding on an important business issue, you have to see the big picture. Visualize the outcome for each specific step that you will take. Be realistic. Cross out alternatives or options that will likely not work. Don’t just listen to what you want to hear or see what you want to see. Gathering inputs from people you truly trust is helpful, but listen to your gut as well.

Answer the following:

  • What do you want to achieve?
  • What are your specific goals?
  • What are your less important objectives that you can set aside?
  • What are the possible conflicts?
  • How much time is required to obtain your goals?
  • How viable is your idea?

Making decisions especially tough ones are difficult to do. No one wants to get it wrong and then look or feel dumb. Stalling isn’t the answer either. Inevitably, indecisions result to decisions that may be made for you. I don’t know about you, but I prefer to call the shots. I’d rather fail because I made the choices than the choices being made for me.

Written by: Shirley Tan

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