#36: Deliberate versus Emergent Decision Making -- embracing the unplanned sparks in one's life and career
Examples and tactics to help you remain open to possibilities that haven't yet been discovered.
When my startup company joined Microsoft last year, it was one of the most exciting things that had ever happened to most of us. But soon after the buzz of the accomplishment had wound down, the questions of “what comes next?” started to dial up, both from my friend-family community and my own brain.
Tl;Dr — this letter is about making sure we aren’t missing really wonderful opportunities by being excessively focused on a deliberate plan and/or not taking the time to be open to more information and/or a potentially better path forward altogether.
I’ve struggled with a blessing/curse of needing to have a strategy or approach to achieve “what’s next” for everything ever since, at age 15, I decided that I wasn’t going to just let life happen to me, but to do my darndest to take life by the horns and drive towards the outcomes I wanted both in my personal life and on the academic/work front.
It’s been a blessing because it keeps me eyes-wide open and action-oriented. I don’t really believe in “It’ll all just work out.”
It’s a curse because you can set great goals and be excessively rigid in pursuing them, and in the discipline of driving towards achievement…completely over-think your journey. You can also be so deep in executing a plan that you miss the many solutions floating by right above, just out of your view.
Below are some perspectives on how to achieve a balance between the poles of “everything must be deliberately planned…” and “eh, everything will work itself out!”:
First, understand the balance between Deliberate and Emergent strategy (article from HBS here)
Clayton M Christensen talks about this in his wonderful book, How Will You Measure Your Life?
Deliberate strategy = deliberate sets of approaches you take in order to achieve a goal.
Example: “I want to become an investment banker after college”
Example: “I want to be CMO of Coca-Cola by 30!!”
Example: “I will move to Paris and live there for at least two years” (…my wife and I have this as a goal for sometime later in life)
Emergent strategy = what arises from unplanned actions you’ve taken. I’ll extend the academic definition to be — “the signals that are all around you that may suggest taking a different direction than what you’ve planned.”
Example: Starting out a walk and planning to go to get coffee from your favorite shop, when you realize that you want a specific type of tea and there’s a tea shop you haven’t tried only another block away —> you sample the tea shop
Example: Planning to stay at one company for your career so that you can achieve a certain level there, only to realize that you get deep joy and fulfillment from doing something entirely different at a different company
Example: Studying for the MCATs (med school exams) and realizing halfway through that you really actually enjoy data analytics and computer science, and so you switch paths and end up building medical analytics software (I’m talking about one of my friends; you know who you are!)
Second, take some time to simply answer the question, “What signals is life / the world giving me that I should be taking a modified path”
I try to answer this question across a set of dimensions. Here are a few:
Health - am I healthy? Am I sleeping? Am I working out enough? Is my career enabling me to be more or less healthy?
Flow at Work — how often do you feel like you’re in an enjoyable flow state? Does work feel HORRIBLE to go to? Can you not remember the last time you felt real joy and empowerment at work? (…that might be a signal to make a change)
People — are the people in your life good for you and vice versa? Do you feel supported? Are you supporting the wellbeing of others? Do you get joy from your relationships? Is there a two-way street in your relationships, or are efforts just one-sided?
Third, talk to other people! (or find ways to hear other perspectives)
Whenever you’re approaching a potential turning point, or you have an idea around a new area you might want to explore, you should do your diligence!
Talk to other people that know you, but also reach out to others whom you don’t know. Get their opinions, ask them to introduce you to others. Talk to as many people as you can to discover more about their journeys, opinions, things they love about their paths, things they don’t love
Read autobiographies on people in spaces that you are interested in
Listen to podcasts! If you can get into auditory learning, this is probably the most efficient way to get many different perspectives quickly. Some of my recent favorites that feature someone interviewing someone else (usually on their life, career, perspectives, etc.) are:
Armchair Expert with Dax Shephard
Tim Ferriss Show
The Generalist
Lex Friedman Podcast (…usually 3-5 hours episodes!)
Acquired (my favorite these days)
Freakonomics (still goin!!)
How I Built This (also still goin!!)
But there are two key things I haven’t explicitly called out above that are: curiosity and patience.
Having the curiosity to ask questions, and seek out color and texture on a given topic… to discover more is what will reveal different parts of the world to you. Exploration is what helps to show you what’s possible. I wrote about this a lot in #28 - Seeing What’s Possible is a Mindset Choice.
And lastly, Patience is so important. Sometimes, you’re just moving too quickly (and without heavy care for details), and it can cause you to metaphorically go off the rails. Something I’ve learned from master chess players, particularly successful operators of large organizations, and studying history’s great leaders is that they know how to manage the clock — when to slow down the pace of a decision making exercise, and to allow time for more observation and consideration on their own and with others around them.
…And yeah, you can be too patient and miss opportunities. There’s no consistent way to know when you’ve been too patient or too impatient. The way I’ve been trying to get better at this is simply to ask others around you. “Hey, I’m in X situation, should I act now, or should I let things sit for a little bit?”
The goal of all of this is really to make sure that we aren’t missing really wonderful opportunities by being excessively focused on a deliberate plan and/or not taking the time to be open to more information and/or a potentially better path forward altogether.