Day 285 - Repeat

 REPEAT

Prompt - Repeat : Write about a time when you had to make a difficult choice

There are important discussions you have to rush, because failure to do so will make things worse, and there are others where the time spent on coming to the answer is well worth it, for the end result needs to be carefully considered.  If there's an immovable deadline there can be no choice but to have to pick a way forward, even if not fully informed.  But where time isn't an issue, and especially if the choice to be made determines how life will then unfold, then best to gather as much information as possible, and carefully examine the options.

In the nineties I recall having to make many decisions, but one in each of the above categories stands out.  The informed choice ended up with me splitting from my first wife, and finding a much happier life.  The realisation that I could do so much better came out of an affair, which then ended.  But it taught me to value myself more, made me realise I could be someone and do things I didn't think I was capable of, and that I would be able to live a happier life on my own than in a broken marriage.  It took years to get to that point, and the story would have a very happy ending, because the person I had had the affair with reached the same decision a little later, and we have been together for twenty eight years.  But getting to the point of going for it took months, years, of deliberation, looking at alternatives, procrastination, indecision, but ultimately the right choice.  

The time-pressured choice came in '99, when I was a so-called 'millennium bug' project manager.  So there was a clear deadline to meet, a plan to be adhered to as best I could, but knowing that along the way there would be points where things weren't working out as envisaged, and then I would be faced with difficult judgements.  Times when I would have to rely on instinct as much as information and opinion.  In this case both my deputies were pressing me to delay the next stage of the rollout, arguing that there were too many flaws in the software.  they were right in that respect, but the bigger picture was the impact of delaying this stage on the overall plan, and what that would do for our already fragile credibility in the user community.  I went against their advice, told them I would take full responsibility and let my board know that I was doing this in the face of a very considered reluctance from my team.  It was a nerve wracjking moment, and I suspect I lost a lot of sleep that night, but I knew that, whether right or wrong in the end, it was essential that I do something.  Eventually my choice proved to be the right one, to my relief (and my team's surprise!), but it could so easily have backfired.  Yet not as much as deferring and deferring and making no decision at all.  Leadership is like that.