The best we can ever do about making a decision is to make a guess. In business it would be called making projections. Basically the same thing, we’re guessing about what will happen in the future.
Two things about guessing:
- Because we’re prognosticating about what might be, whether we’re trying to figure out what our sales figures will be in the next quarter, or deciding on paint colour for the living room, it stirs up a lot of anxiety and fear. The anxiety and fear leads to all kinds of truly unhelpful behaviour, from getting and staying stuck to chronic procrastination.
- The most helpful guessing comes from gathering intel and letting go of the outcome. In terms of projecting for revenue for the next quarter, it means we gather results from previous quarters around the same time period, calculate the median value and voilà, next quarter’s projections. We then let go of the idea of being right.
This is the HUGE part. LETTING GO OF NEEDING TO BE RIGHT. Unless you’re a practical physicist or brain surgeon, we all have some significant latitude in being wrong. The reality is that for most of us, not being right doesn’t mean blowing up the planet or performing an unnecessary lobotomy.
The most helpful guesses simply require that we gather as much information as we can, then leap. Allow the future to unfold, let go of the need to control and be right. It’s an impossibility anyway. The question however is, if we know worrying and trying to control outcomes is pointless, then why do we insist on doing it?
Digging into that question might provide us with some very useful information.
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