Paralyzed by possibility: Why perfect plans are killing your progress.

By Steen Rasmussen

If you’ve ever spent 40 minutes scrolling Netflix only to give up and rewatch The Office again, congratulations, you’ve experienced decision paralysis. Imagine this happening inside a marketing department, a data team, or a C-suite strategy meeting. 

It's not just frustrating, it's expensive.

Over the past years, I’ve seen a growing trend in organizations of all sizes: a chronic fear of making the wrong move. We’ve become obsessed with optimizing, always hunting for the perfect plan, timing, and data. And in the process, we’re forgetting the real cost that never shows up in quarterly reports: the cost of inaction.

This isn’t theoretical. It’s operational, cultural, and measurable if you know what to look for.

The one-way door illusion

Most decisions in business today are treated as if they are irreversible. 

We act as if launching a new campaign, hiring a new vendor, or trying a new tool is akin to choosing a life partner. But in reality, most daily and operational decisions are reversible. These are two-way doors. You walk through, assess, adjust or walk back. Yet we hesitate, treating everything like a one-way bet.

This fear-based mindset leads to bloated sales cycles, hiring delays, marketing gaps, and missed opportunities. The pressure to get it “right” has replaced the incentive to get it “moving.”

The maximizer’s trap

A term borrowed from psychology that perfectly explains this mindset is the “maximizer.” Maximizers seek the absolute best outcome in every decision. They’ll compare every option, research endlessly, and delay action just to make sure nothing better exists. 

Ironically, they often end up less satisfied even when they choose well because they keep wondering what else they might have missed.

This behavior isn’t just inefficient; it’s unsustainable in leadership and operations. You don’t need a perfect decision, you need a good-enough one, made on time, with built-in agility.

What your clients and teams actually need

In consulting and sales, urgency doesn’t come from artificial deadlines or scarcity tactics. Smart clients see through that. What works is mapping consequences. When a client hesitates, it’s often because they’re overwhelmed by the mental load of imagining outcomes.

Break it down for them. “Here’s what happens if you say yes. Here’s what happens if you wait. Here’s what we can change later. Here’s what we can’t.” Reduce the mental cost of moving forward.

Clients (and teams) might not need bigger promises. They might need smaller risks.

Analytics ≠ Perfection

In data, we’re especially guilty of overengineering certainty. I’ve worked with organizations that refuse to act until every data source is piped into a central dashboard, with 98% data cleanliness and stakeholder alignment across five regions.

And let me be absolutely clear here. perfect data is an illusion. 

The final 5% of data precision often costs more than the first 95% combined. The goal of analytics isn’t omniscience, it's actionability. What can you do with the data you have now? What decisions can it accelerate?

A few key metrics, directionally correct and regularly monitored, can drive more value than 100 dashboards that nobody opens.

Calendar the commitment

One personal habit I’ve developed (and now preach) is the Decision Hour, a dedicated block in my calendar every week to process pending decisions. Not to gather more information, not to brainstorm, but to decide. 

It's a muscle. And just like with training, the more you exercise it, the stronger it gets.

Opportunity doesn’t wait

If you’re stuck in endless loops of planning, aligning, forecasting, and scenario-modeling, stop. Take a hard look at what that delay is costing you. 

Because while you’re waiting for the stars to align, competitors are shipping products, running experiments, testing campaigns, hiring fast, and learning in real-time.

You don't need a perfect plan. You need a path forward.

And that means being brave enough to choose progress over perfection because in most cases, the biggest risk isn’t failure.

It’s standing still.