How a TV station covers news can teach you a lot about why it’s important to make fast decisions. Sometimes otherwise effective business leaders can become paralyzed with indecision, even when action could lead to immediate improvement.
The challenge is that they’re living in a world without absolute deadlines and that’s something I know very well from the world of TV news. There it’s all about making decisions and especially decisions that need to be made quickly.
The newscast you watch is not designed to be an all encompassing record of what happened on that day. This may be a surprise but coverage is often dictated by logistical and staffing limitations.
Certain stories are not covered because the station doesn’t have enough personnel or the story is taking place is a far away geographic area. Every day, the newsroom makes a kind of bet in terms of using its resources.
Fate sometimes laughs at the plans of newsrooms. Breaking news can force crews to have to drop stories or run them as much shorter pieces. A nationally televised sporting event might run long, shrinking the newscast that follows, which results in good stories being dropped for time. Sometimes, the problem is that a photographer can’t come to work due to the flu and there’s no one who can replace him or her.
In all cases, people are forced to ask themselves, “How can we get this done?”
This is very important because no matter the situation, everyone knows the newscast has to happen. When five or six o’clock comes, the show must go on.
What viewers see may not be the best newscast but you don’t have the option of not putting one out. It’s an absolute deadline.
With this in mind, people have to sacrifice, get creative, and find a way to make things work in a short amount of time. While there may be arguments over the choices made, everyone is united in meeting the deadline.
In your world, do you push back deadlines or ignore problems until another day?
While you don’t have to run your business like a newsroom, I’ve found these questions to be a good tool in making fast decisions:
- Will a proposed change make us better?
- What is the price of inaction?
- Why are we afraid of making a change?
Not every decision should be made in a matter of minutes but I believe many hard decisions are delayed longer than necessary out of fear. When you have a process that forces you to address these matters faster, you become more effective.
Ken Okel Performs Virtual Keynotes Too
