114,500,000 people watched the Super Bowl on Sunday, 114,499,999 of them knew the correct call. With 26 seconds left in the game and the ball on the one yard line, the correct call was to hand the ball to Marshawn Lynch to pound it into the end zone. When you have a guy with the nickname “Beast Mode” on your team, who is known for his ability to run aggressively and break tackles, what else would you do? Instead, the Seahawks pass — interception — game over.
The only person who didn’t know it was the right call was Pete Carroll, the Seahawks’ head coach.
Coaches, like all of us, sometimes over analyze situations. We “out-think” ourselves. Our gut tells us one thing, the information or situation presented to us confirms what our gut feels, yet we talk ourselves into doing something else. More often or not, the alternative approach fails and we ask ourselves, “Why did I just do that?”
Actionable Idea: Assess your decision-making skills. How often is your “gut” right? My guess is the more experienced you are at your present job, the better your “gut” is – after all, intuition is partially attributable to your ability to translate the outcome of prior situation into new ones.
When faced with a situation where the right strategy is obvious, don’t talk yourself out of it. Simple in theory, but hard in practice.
Listen to your “gut”. Sometimes the obvious answer is the right one.
Photo by Anthony Quintano, license: CC BY 2.0
