Comment by Ozzie_osman | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Ozzie_osman | Hacker News Reader

This is something I've thought about a lot, and while I like the framing in the article, it's missing a few key dimensions.

Optionality: In addition to "letting things resolve themselves", one benefit you can sometimes get by deferring a decision (esp a "one-way door" decision) is optionality (of learning information that might result in a better decision).

Waffling: On the other hand, if you are a manager or decision-maker on whom others depend, one of the worst things you can do is waffle on a key decision (ie, be indecisive). Andy Grove has a paragraph on this in High Output Management as one of the highest negative leverage things a manager can do to their team, and in fact, often a wrong (but correctible) decision is far better than no decision.

Good managers instinctively know how to navigate these tradeoffs.

You can defer the decision without waffling on the communication. Saying "we'll decide this later" (ideally with some reasons / parameters), is decisive - and sometimes gets pushback. Going silent in order to avoid dissent is bad form.

Not to say this "technique" isn't useful, but imo it should be super limited. I'll put off a reply when a) it's a non-urgent issue, where b) resources (documentation, or other local users' experience) exist, c) this user will be motivated to find them (by the nature of the issue, or because I know they are the sort of person who does that), and d) independent problem-solving will fulfill a teaching function. Even then, I will hit "Snooze" on the email and follow up a day or two later: if they haven't solved it I'll point them to a resource; if they have I'll praise them for figuring it out for themselves. People like both outcomes.

I notice that many of the historical examples are a result of latency in communication, like people asking for things that had already been done. We don't often face that constraint.

From the outside, "strategic delay" and "indecision" can look identical, but they feel very different to the people depending on you

To quote Tony Soprano (or Cicero, I guess): "More is lost by indecision than wrong decision."

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