It’s complicated…
I hear this a lot in both personal and professional settings. It inevitably seems to come up with regards to a difficult decision that has to be made or a situation that must be addressed.
Whether that’s having an uncomfortable but necessary conversation with someone, or changing strategic directions after you realize you’re heading in the wrong direction with considerable sunk costs or, letting someone go, ending a partnership, you name it.
Achieving progress in these hours of decision is very rarely correlated to solving the complexity of the situation. We aren’t talking the Israeli-Palestinian conflict here. More often than not, it is about creating a plan and having the personal or professional courage to do what needs to be done.
So while it might be uncomfortable, nerve-racking, embarrassing and laden with consequences we will have to deal with at a later point, that does not translate to complicated.
We need to be careful about the language we use and that we potentially hide behind to avoid or delay the necessary course of action. Just because we don’t like what needs to be done doesn’t make it complicated. That’s a slippery misnomer.
It may be difficult and unpleasant, but the course of action is likely to be simple.
So what is one decision you could make right now to get off your “complicated” to-do list?
