Decision Making & Procrastination

In my view, there are no advantages to the habit of procrastinating. Procrastination of a business decision (or any other) implies it is due to laziness or lack of desire. There may be, of course, inadvertent good or bad luck associated with procrastinating. If we must assign advantages to procrastination they might be: we can do other things, we can think about how best to accomplish what it is we are procrastinating about; we can avoid the stress of doing whatever we were going to accomplish; we can gain some sleep or rest before deciding, etc.

The disadvantages, particularly in a business situation may be: it may keep you and the company from achieving one or more of its goals (and you could be fired); it does apply stress in that there is guilt associated with procrastinating; it has a negative impact on your reputation if it is habitual; it allows other events and decisions to "pile up" and everything begins to snowball downhill. In business, strategically delaying a decision is far different from procrastinating.

Examples

Swatch's debut (and withdrawal) of the "Web Watch" in 2000 is a good example of a decision made too soon. The watch was designed to allow the wearer to log onto the Web. It had microchips capable of doing anything a laptop could do. So out it came. Problem was that you need a keyboard and monitor big enough to see and use. The Web watch, amazingly, had neither. You had to hook it up to a PC to use it! Swatch introduced it too soon due to its enthusiasm over the technology. Perhaps they should have procrastinated (Matlack, 2000).

Chrysler and General Motors. Their procrastination, greed and laziness in sticking to the big, expensive, gas-guzzlers when the foreign car market was moving elsewhere -- into the U.S. And profitability -- and the resultant loss of business, cancellation of dealerships, and layoffs of tens thousands of workers, has to be the worst business decision in modern history.

Bibliography

Matlack, C. (2000, September 11). Bad timing for Swatch's web watch. Retrieved July 1, 2009, from Business Week: http://www.businessweek.com/bwdaily/dnflash/sep2000/nf20000911_089.htm procrastinate. (2009). In Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary. Retrieved July 1, 2009, from http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/procrastinate