Being self-aware of one’s own biases is a great first step. Decision making Fatigue is a real thing and good leaders find a way to manage this effectively let’s get into it through one of my favourite movies of all time – ‘Good Will Hunting’, starring Matt Damon, Robin Williams and Ben Affleck.
Why did the makers of ‘Good Will Hunting’ sign with Miramax as producers? If you haven’t gotten around to seeing it- please get to it, you won’t regret it.
Grossing over $225 million in against a production budget of $10 million. It won two Oscars – Best Supporting Actor for Robin Williams and Best Original Screenplay for Affleck and Damon. Matt Damon wrote this during his fifth year at Harvard and when he started showing the scripts around.
There were many studios who came back with offers, if they could get other actors, some of them asking for a rewrite etc. They had a problem of plenty, there were 12 studios vying for the rights including a very small outfit called Miramax. Matt and Ben went back and forth and were not able to make up their mind about who to partner with. Matt and Ben needed some guardrails to help them make up their mind.
When the head of Miramax spoke to them – he admitted to being confused by a Gay Sex Scene that didn’t make any sense.
That’s was it! That was exactly when Matt and Ben knew who they had to sign this life-changing movie with. You see, creative integrity and belief in the story was their topmost non-negotiable in their decision behind a studio and not just bags of money.
The scene was inserted by Ben and Matt to see which of the studio heads actually read through the script entirely before making a decision and that was their guardrail. This was a masterclass in – Decision making – breaking out of Auto Pilot and a technique to fight DECISION FATIGUE.
As Leaders, we need to be conscious of our energy and not allow decision making fatigue affect us, this is also the reason Barack and Mark Zuckerberg have a limited wardrobe – they wear similar looking, dichromatic outfits every single day. So that they may preserve their energy for more crucial, indispensable decisions they need to make in their respective fields.
We often find ourselves spending way too much time in making decisions that are not as important as the ones we truly need to be paying attention to. Save your energy for making bigger decisions folks!
So…. How do you like them Apples? I am sorry I just had to slip in a “Good Will Hunting” reference.
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