If you have a responsibility to manage things, you’ll often feel pressured to make quick decisions. Early in my career this was certainly the case. I’d be in a meeting and some quite sensible, appropriate, question would be asked and I would have to give an answer. I’d either make what would turn out to be the wrong decision, or worse than that, I’d end up admitting that I didn’t know what to do.

Which brings me to “Hmm.. interesting”, which Kathy Sierra recommends saying (or thinking) “before you say or do anything else”. This advice to think about something, even for mere moments, before acting is fundamental to good management. The public counterpart to this is to defer a decision, but in a way that conveys action and responsibility. The usual way to do this is to say “let me get back to you on this issue”. But that’s no good. What people should want to hear is “let me get back to you on this issue before [insert date or time here]”. This publicly prioritises and commits to a resolution. If you do this when required and more importantly deliver on these commitments you’ll be a better manager.

One of the things I do a lot more of now, working in my own business, is thinking. I spend an awful lot of time thinking. Sometimes without writing anything down. I think about the work we’re doing a lot of the time outside of working hours, although it doesn’t feel like work. In some respects, the “let me get back to you” response has evolved into a “I need to think about this”, although I’d doubt you could use this reply in the corporate world – it seems a bit, um, woolly. But I am now renown to some customers as a thinker.

For example, I’ve recently been thinking about implementing solutions to a number of new requirements for a web application. Here’s a summary of what those requirements are:

1. Integrating a manufacturing process with a sales process;
2. Allowing stock to be sent to external suppliers for further processing, then received back into stock as different items;
3. Reporting on the building of stock from component stock parts.

Three distinct problems on which I’ve been thinking for the past three to four weeks. Yesterday at around 11pm I came to the conclusion that they were all similar requirements that could be solved in a unified way. I’ve saved a lot of development time because I sat on these problems, rather than just picking one up and implementing it. Some might say that this is just the result of good analysis, but the lesson to learn is that there often are good (and easy) solutions to problems, no matter how obtuse or difficult those problems might appear.

Which leads to another conclusion: 37signals’ post titled “Degrees of Can’t” indicates that it’s easy to close the door on something by declaring it impossible to do. I’ve known many junior managers who have used this tactic. In practice it is rare that something cannot be done. Usually it just requires some thought and analysis. A moment of “Hmm..”