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How (Ir)reversibility Can Help Young Leaders In Uncertain Times

Forbes Coaches Council

Kayvan Kian is the author of What Is Water? and a Senior Advisor to McKinsey & Company, where he founded the Young Leaders Forum.

It’s another busy week packed with meetings, calls, important presentations and unforeseen issues that need your attention. When you sit down at your desk, you start going through a stack of agreements that require your signature. Decisions with serious ramifications are included in that stack, which could range from hiring an employee to switching providers to establishing a partnership with another company.

Chances are good that you’ve run a cost-benefit analysis on most of these decisions and have numbers at your disposal that can justify a decision one way or the other. Hopefully, you’ve also considered the first-order and second-order consequences of signing your name on the dotted line. But there’s another last-second check that can be helpful when making difficult decisions in a volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous world: Is the decision reversible or irreversible?

In other words: Can you take back the decision you’re about to make? When you consider that stack of papers with this lens, it can help you see a new side of things. The numbers will tell you one story, but what if that story doesn’t go the way you want and eventually you’re locked into it?

There are situations where the choice between reversible or irreversible is a binary one. For example, when it comes to cooking a meal that can’t be reversed back to its original ingredients. In business, however, it is often a spectrum where the area between the two extremes can be explored in creative ways. So, before you sign your name on that paper, pause and consider: Where do I want this decision to land?

Considering Irreversibility

The image of “burning bridges behind you” comes to mind with irreversible decisions because it’s either forward... or nowhere. Facing that kind of choice can provide huge motivation to succeed. If your business or your savings or your reputation is on the line, you’re most likely going to make the most of your situation. And if you fail, it’s not going to be because of a lack of effort.

Irreversible decisions can also help create self-sufficiency. There’s no going back, at least in the short-term, to that which you’re dependent on because you’ve removed easy access. You might do this by relocating your office, introducing new policies or formally cutting off collaboration with certain vendors who are getting in the way of your own development.

Finally, an irreversible decision can act as a signal to others. Taking costly action shows you’re serious because you’ve moved beyond words. If you invest all your savings into a new business, you’re signaling to the world that you’re all in on making the idea work and your commitment is clear and credible.

Considering Reversibility

For each of these benefits, you’ll of course be paying a significant cost, so it’s critical to examine the context and determine if those benefits are worth it. For example, you can ask yourself if the extra motivation will make a difference: Would you not be motivated enough if things were to be reversible?

In case the costs don’t seem worth it, you can explore if there’s a way to make an irreversible decision (more) reversible. Could you somehow make sure you “have the right, but not the obligation” to move forward with each step regarding certain aspects? Is there a way to undo certain decisions along the way in order to go back to how things were originally, like an ice cube melting back to water?

For example, with a new partnership, could you try out one full project together first, so that both sides can get a better sense of how they work under pressure? Then, after a few months, you can decide whether to formalize everything and continue forward.

Instead of investing your full budget into a new product, what if you tested it out as a pilot with an amount of money you could afford to lose? Then, if things don’t work out, you can pull the ripcord and move on without being financially devastated by the miscalculation.

Designing Wisely And Diving In

Now, imagine that paper from the stack in one of two trays: reversible and irreversible. Which one is it currently in, and which tray would you like to ideally place it? If you want to move it from irreversible to reversible, could you design a pilot, build in a trial period or include a money-back guarantee? What if you crowdfunded the investment you needed rather than all of it coming out of pocket, or what if you first did a soft launch of your idea?

Also, look at it the other way around: reversible to irreversible. Could you build in significant penalties or fees for any party attempting to reverse the decision? What would “burning the bridges behind you” look like in this scenario?

Certain opportunities may come along only once in a lifetime, some initiatives might require decades before the fruits of your investments become visible and seemingly minor missteps can close important doors forever. You therefore often won’t have the chance to learn from experience, delay a decision, get better information about the future (even with a pre-mortem) or afford plain bad luck. Once you’ve made a decision, it might already be too late; therefore, make sure you ask yourself in real-time: How (ir)reversible is this decision, and how would I ideally design it?


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