Some of the most difficult decisions I have had to make, both at work and personally, are when I've had to reverse a decision to which I was committed. Whether it's stopping a pet project in marketing, or acknowledging that a new product investment was flawed, it's not easy to say, 'I was wrong, we should stop now'.
However,
this is just what we in the UK need to do now, in my opinion, given the way we
are advancing towards an economic disaster as we exit the European Union. As
talks resume this week in Brussels, we see only exasperation on both sides. The
prospect of any breakthrough is unlikely.
It's never
easy to admit that we were wrong, or that circumstances have now changed and
our decision won't work. But one of the lessons I've learned through bitter
experience is that it can be worse to persist, doggedly trying to make an
erroneous decision work, holding onto the original vision that led to the
decision in the first place, even if it was wrong.
In the boom
years of the early noughties I remember an elearning project we were working on
which I believed would become massive. It was in line with the analysts’
predictions, and it had some great early adopters involved. I was
determined, but I was not tuned in strongly enough to our wider customer base
and the market place as a whole - I wanted to believe the hype and was not
sufficiently close to what was going on around us. I was too stubborn, and we would
have been much better off to have adapted our approach to be more in line with
what clients were actually seeking at that time. In the end, it was a
partial success. However, we wasted a lot of time and effort with an enormous
opportunity cost.
I suspect
the politicians who are locked onto a Brexit timetable will look back with the
same sense of regret that they didn't listen to what was happening around them.
The UK government, even after the abortive snap election earlier this year, is
acting as though it has only a forward gear. Like James Dean's opponent in Rebel
Without a Cause’s famous ‘chickie
run’ scene, it is driving quickly towards the cliff, unable to escape the
inevitable crash below.
Back in
2001 I needed to have had more humility, more willingness to listen to the
advice of others and to acknowledge when my decision was, at least in part,
wrong. I needed to slow down, to talk to customers, and to adapt to changing
market demand. I wish I had been more connected to our customers and my
colleagues, and able to put my hands up and accept that my initial decision was
not right.