How To Supercharge Your Bias For Action

Are you frightened to take action in the face of uncertainty? How do you navigate these situations? Do you stay in your comfort zone or take a courageous leap of faith?

It’s completely normal to feel nervous when you are doing something unfamiliar and new, especially at work. You want to be seen as competent, someone who consistently delivers outstanding results and seldom fails, right?

But what if I told you that failure might actually be a positive thing? I’ve learned that failure elicits learning. And typically the more you fail, the more you learn.

Here is one of my favorite quotes illustrating the importance of failure to become successful:

“We need to accept that we won’t always make the right decisions, that we’ll screw up royally sometimes – understanding that failure is not the opposite of success, it’s part of success.” ― Arianna Huffington

This quotes remind me that failure is just part of the process. However, in order to fail, you need to have a bias for action.

In this post, I going to explain the following:  

• Define what a bias for action means
• Share the benefits of having a bias for action
• Share 3 strategies for how to develop a bias for action 

Bias For Action Meaning

A bias for action has become somewhat of a buzzword in the business and entrepreneurial world lately. 

In fact, it’s a core Amazon leadership principle that’s deeply embedded in the organizations culture. They even ask how you exhibit this behavior during their interview process – speaking from personal experience.

So, what does having a bias for action mean? I have researched definitions that have described this as people having decisive, action-oriented, and calculated risk-taking behavior. 

My personal definition is: Taking the initiative to learn by doing in the face of ambiguity.

Ambiguity is just a normal part of our personal and professional lives. We encounter ambiguity when we are trying to solve problems, improve processes, and innovate on new solutions. But if you have the determination to push through the ambiguity, some amazing things can happen.

We push through the ambiguity by placing an emphasis on doing, not planning and deliberating. Because as humans, we learn by doing, not by planning

You (Probably) Have A Bias For Action

A simple example for having a bias for action is learning how to ride a bike. Do you remember the first time you learned how to ride a bike? Did you plan out how you were going to stay balanced or think about how much pressure to apply on your brakes? Probably not!

You most likely got on the bike and started pedaling. I’m sure you fell down a few times but, got back on the bike, and repeated the process until you could ride without even thinking about it. This is what’s known as having a bias for action. You just have to apply this principle in your professional life!

Benefits of Having a Bias For Action

While adopting a bias for action mindset has been challenging, it has also developed me more professionally and personally.

Here’s just a brief list of how this approach has impacted me in my career:

• Innovated Faster
• Learned Faster
• Made better decisions quickly
• Tolerated more ambiguity
• Became a confident leader
• Boosted my productivity
• Encouraged learning over perfection with others
• Enabled my creativity

Bias For Action Examples

There are a variety ways you can practice having a bias for action in the workplace. Take a look a the examples below of how professionals in different industries can practice this approach:

• In the tech and startup industry, having a bias for action means quickly developing and launching minimal viable products. Rather than spending excessive time on perfecting a product, companies release a prototype or concept to the market. They gather feedback, learn from user experiences, and iterate rapidly. Speed matters in business and this approach allows them to enter the market sooner, adapt to customer needs faster, and stay ahead of competitors.
• A manager has analysis paralysis because of the amount of information available and needs to make an important business decision. The manager identifies the least risky option with the most benefits and creates a plan to test it.
• You are working on an ambiguous project / task and aren’t sure exactly how to best proceed. Instead of floundering, you connect with your leader to brainstorm ideas on the next steps to take 
• A software developer encounters multiple bugs on a program they are writing. Instead of trying to fix every bug before releasing the program, they might fix the most critical issues first. Then release the program as an update
• Salespeople who are not meeting their targets can seek guidance from experienced colleagues to try out new techniques.
• A project manager decides to use agile methodologies to complete a project. A traditional project management approach relies on long-term planning that is rigid. In agile, teams plan and execute in short cycles, making rapid adjustments as needed.

How To Develop Your Bias For Action

Developing your bias for action is challenging, especially if you are a perfectionist. However, I encourage you to try the following three strategies below to develop your skill.

1. Be Ok Not Knowing All The Answers

As professionals, we can find ourselves in situations where we have to make important decisions with incomplete information. It’s a precarious situation that can leave us feeling anxious and frustrated. However, to have a bias for action, we need to be ok moving forward not knowing all the answers.

If you encounter this situation, stop and take a deep breath. Try to think about what your very next step is, you don’t need to have every single step drawn out. If you don’t have enough information to take the next step, try brainstorming with a peer or leader.

2. Set up an Experiment

In the continuous improvement and lean world is a framework that encourages experimentation. It is the Plan, Do, Check, Act process or the PDCA cycle and is comprised of 4 steps. Use this framework especially when you are not sure how the results will turn out. Bonus: If you are a leader, have your team use this process to develop their critical thinking skills.

1. Plan what you want to try (after evaluating risk and not knowing what the results will be)
2. Do the experiment / test,
3. Check if you achieved the results you intended
4. Act or adjust the experiment for next time if you did not achieve your intended results.

Photo Cred: Product Plan

3. Limit the Perfect Plan Trap With 60, Go!

Referencing the PDCA cycle above, some of the best advice I received early in my career was 60, Go! In short, it means not spending your valuable time creating the “perfect plan”. Instead, develop approximately 60% of your plan, then test it out.

I had the honor of being mentored by Shingijitsu consultants early in my career who taught me this concept. These senior consultants had worked in the Toyota Production System for 50+ years before coaching others. They developed top production processes, producing cars every 45 seconds at Toyota.

By quickly developing a plan and testing it, you’ll learn what works and doesn’t, faster. You drastically decrease your learning opportunity if your goal is to create a “perfect plan”. More so, you waste valuable time that you could be using to test, learn, and adjust to better hit your goals.

If you don’t succeed at first, learn from your previous attempts and try another PDCA cycle.

The more PDCA cycles you do, the better you can think about the problem, and the quicker you can solve it.

Just a note on trying to make the “perfect plan”, it usually happens away from the actual work, often causing mistaken assumptions.

Take Action!

Developing your bias for action is not a one-time achievement, it’s an on-going commitment. It’s a quality that can separate good leaders (and individual contributors) from great ones. Organizations are constantly looking for people who are innovate, produce quality results, and focus on continuous learning. Embracing a bias for action is a key foundation of these qualities.

Remember, having a bias for action doesn’t mean making reckless and high-risk decisions. It’s about finding that delicate balance between analysis, planning, and execution.

As you work to develop your bias for action, remember these 3 key takeaways:

1. Be OK not having all the answers
2. Stay focused on running experiments so you can iterate and learn faster
3. Limit the “perfect plan” approach with the 60, Go! strategy

Every great achiever in history was once where you are now, with dreams, doubts, and the determination to act. What set them apart was their dedication to taking that first step and then another, and another, until they finally reached success.