Overcoming the Six Dangers of Flip-Flopping
Lack of confidence creates foolish urgency which blocks your ability to withhold judgment, gather information, and explore options.
One cause of too much urgency:
Questions from others pressure you to decide quickly. You don’t take enough time to gather information and explore options. The end result is you end up changing your mind. There are at least six dangers when leaders flop like a fish on the dock.
Six Dangers of flip-flopping:
- Lost credibility. You can’t lead if you aren’t trustworthy. The ability to change your mind is admirable and necessary when new information or contingencies emerge. Pig-headed leaders aren’t respected either. You’re a joke, however, when you frequently change your mind because you decided rashly.
- Neediness. Losing credibility creates pressure to gain it back. The more you try to gain credibility the needier you seem and the less credible you are.
- Second guessers. All leaders deal with second guessers. Flip-flopping leaders invite more second guessers.
- More rash decisions. Second guessers make inexperienced leaders feel pressured to make more decisions which results in lost credibility, again.
- Delay. Flip-flopping causes everyone to wait around for the next change. While they wait nothing gets done.
- Confusion.
Solutions:
In a dynamic environment, skillfully changing your mind is necessary. Everyone understands changing because circumstances change expresses wisdom.
Train yourself, on the other hand, to make considered decisions so you don’t rashly reconsider.
Five ways to overcome flip-flopping:
- Listen and ask questions. John Wooden said, “Go slow to go fast.”
- Consider the impact of your decision on all parties.
- Talk through your decisions privately before going public.
- Stay the course unless important factors change.
- Focus more on targets and less on methods.
- Make minor course corrections that keep you on target.
What causes leaders to flip-flop on their decisions?
How can leaders effectively change decisions without becoming flip-floppers?
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More articles on making decisions:
Microsoft’s Chief Security Officer on Decision-Making
10 Decision-Making Power Tips from Dave Ramsey
Ten Tactics that Produce Brilliant Solutions
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Some other reasons I have seen leaders flip-flop are:
+ not having clear objective(s)/vision in the first place. (This point may be inherent in your great list about ways to overcome flip-flops)
+ they are conflict-averse and flip-flop when there is push back
Agree with Cinnie about vision. Leaders who have a clear and consistent vision are often clear and consistent in their decisions.
Fab post, Dan, thank you. Several weeks ago I had to make a very difficult decision that involved asking a long-serving volunteer to stand down from her position in the club because she wasn’t prepared to go along with the direction of the committee. Credibility was an issue for me because I’ve only been a member of the club for a year and chairman for six months. The member stood down, but as she did delivered a parting shot along the lines of ‘the way you’re doing it will never work.’ Of course I worried about this because of my inexperience, but I made the decision with the backing of the committee and stuck to it. Things have turned out just fine and the lady is still a member of our club and seems much happier now she’s not doing the role, so it’s worked out well for all of us.
I learned so much from this one experience. I learned that it’s important to have the support of your team when you make a decision, because that lends credibility to you. I think leaders who make unilateral decisions are more likely to have to flip-flop because they haven’t got the support of those they lead. A leader who doesn’t bring people along with them is a leader of none.
As a teacher and parent I know it’s important to stick by your decisions otherwise you appear unreliable and out of control. Sometimes more information comes to light and you have to be prepared to change. I’ve found that when I’ve had to change my mind in a class situation, it’s helped if the students understand the reason for the change. They then feel you are being more just because you are prepared to take all views into consideration. I think this is how you can change your decision without being a flip-flopper. If you need to change your mind, explain the reason for it and for heaven’s sake don’t change it back again!
Vanessa, Nice comment…what I gather from you is…have support…explain, explain and stand firm!!!
I bet that after you made your decision there was this space of time where you had to wait and see how your decision would pan out. That gap of time is the most difficult to manage for the leader because if you do not have inner confidence you begin to question yourself
Thanks Joe, much more succinctly put! The first few weeks were tricky, but sticking with it is key. I don’t think the self-questioning ever goes away, but that’s a good thing if you learn from it and don’t let it get you down. I now have confidence to get on with other decisions and I feel I have everyone’s support, even the member in question.
A couple of thoughts . . .
Army axiom: your plan is just a baseline for change. What they mean is that you plan so that when circumstances inevitably change you can react quickly by addressing just that part of things that has changed. So expect to revisit decisions, but try to change parts of the plan only, while leaving the basic trajectory in place.
Related thought: If you have a culture of discussing change, your people will participate in or at least buy into the changes, especially when they see the overall plan still in place.
The underlying cause of flipflopping is the old “ready, fire, aim” approach of acting before preparing. Preparation of self is a leader’s ongoing responsibility; information-gathering and risk analysis are leader responsibilities when it’s decision time.
Greg,
I like your axiom….reminds me of the “commanders intent” principle. We know what needs to be accomplished but in the heat of the operation changes may have to be made but that is not considered a flip-flop just an adjustment in accomplishing to overall goal.
Commander’s intent is a key part — it enables improvisation. Just wrote about that on my blog a few days ago.
Your blog is?
Mouse over my icon/pic. It’s there.
Greg, I am fine with ‘ready, fire, aim, adjust and fire again’…or maybe it is lather, rinse, repeat. Absolutely there needs to be preparation in the ready stage. While we are focusing on flip flopping, too much analysis or ‘what if’s can bog a process down and peeps start noting that all we do is talk about things…
Agree with you that it’s an on-going, iterative process, Doc. And there is such a thing as over-thinking it. The trick is, how much planning is just enough?
Probably the best way to be caught in the flip-flop mess is to not do your homework gathering information and mixing that with negative emotions….flip-flop every time…if this happens several times you loose credibility and respect very quickly with your followers.
Followers understand from time to time decisions may need to be changed but as Vanessa said clear reasons need to be communicated first.
Misinformation, inaccurate information as the basis of the initial decision can cause flip flops. When that occurs, being open and transparent about the cause goes a long way.
Even if the group cannot do a best case/worst case outcome projection, the leader can do that. That is part of the prep process. And if, along the continuum, you land too close to the worst case, that is a valid time to at least flip and own the error, adjust and move on. Again, a high degree of accountability for the decision is needed and benefits the culture.
Doc, as usual, you see past the surface to underlying causes. The first step to anything — planning, root cause analysis, problem-solving, value-stream mapping — is information-gathering. A lot of folks think they already know, and don’t bother to actually re-look/re-measure. Great point.
Had to chuckle about the ‘a lot of folks think they already know’ comment…so true. (They may not know what they don’t know.) What they know may be historical and no longer valid, which often is a realm leaders are in and don’t realize it. They may have been on the front lines once…however, that is not now.
Flip-Flopping in decisions is the result of confusion or uncertainty. Too much dependence or the basic need of referring the matters to the top forces a leader to have procastination and give loud answers. Empowerment and collection of relevant factual information/data will help in taking quick, timely decisions.
Successful leaders will priotise, take the necessary help from all concerned and take good decisions keeping the organization goal in mind and look at the long-term interest.
When I think of flip-flopping, I remember seeing leaders make choices based upon rickety criteria. For one, the Dean of the school where I worked wouldn’t hire anyone who had worked in the military or who had graduated from certain schools. Another, who is an HR Manager, hires based on age and speed.
In some ways, it was unfortunate that the Dean didn’t flip-flop. Had he occasionally flip-flopped, the odds might have loosened up to enable chance forward movement. I wouldn’t advocate this as a solution, because it is based only on the odds.
In the case of age and speed, it is all flip-flopping. The person has tried different combinations (ie fast and young, fast and older, slow and young, slow and older). What he doesn’t realize is that there are other qualities to consider.
So in order to overcome the likely outcomes of flip-flopping in my examples, I suggest being deliberate and considering several well-thought-out criteria. This is what all five ways to overcome flip-flopping point to.
I really like the list. Thank you, Dan.
What causes leaders to flip-flop on their decisions? In a profit-driven business, it may be easier to see how flip-floppy leaders are beholden to ups and downs of profit. In a non profit (my world), the leaders I respect the most are the ones who stay the course even though they are under political or other external pressures to please a certain segment of the customer base, possibly at the expense of others.
How can leaders effectively change decisions without becoming flip-floppers? The key is moderation – if a leader only changes decisions occasionally and can justify the change, that’s one thing. If they change all the time they will (as you said) stop mattering to anyone.
Paula good point…..if a leader is constantly changing and never finishing or seeing a project to completion that leader ceases to matter. I have since left an organization where the leader was constantly going for one thing to the next not finishing anything. I became so frustrated I had to leave because in my mind as you said this leader stopped mattering….
Dear Dan,
I agree to your suggestions and points why leaders flip-flop on their decisions. Besides low confidence there are other factors that make leaders to flip flop on their decisions. They are their personal incompetence and their unwillingness to accept that. They are not ready to accept their weaknesses and more than that they are more hopeful. They expect more than they make effort. And this hope and expectation generally make them to make their decisions shaky to turn into their favour. They are even unable to accept their failure. I also believe that they try to appear perfectionist and try to satisfy everyone. This is their major drawbacks. I think decisions are not absolute; they can be changed provided leaders provide timely and relevant evidence. I think leaders can effectively change their decisions without become flip flopper by accepting and convincing about logic and needs. But repeated changing decisions surely make leaders unreliable and unrealistic. Time is the crucial factors when leaders need to change decisions. Timely information about decision change has positive and reliable impact and untimely or sudden decision change provide unreliable and unpredictable impression about the leaders.
Flip flopping is something that greatly undermines leadership. Agreed, we all change our minds once in a while. But when you start doing it too often, that’s when you know that something is wrong.
I can understand (understand, not appreciate) it when bosses flip flop because they are unsure of their choices. But I have come across bosses who change their decisions simply to assert the fact that they are in power. They think that imposing last minute changes will keep their employees ‘on their toes’. What do you do in such cases?
-Sindoora (http://www.beyondhorizons.in)