Don’t Be a Flat Squirrel

Everyone… everyone has pet peeves; those things that others do that just annoy you beyond expression. And almost daily when you drive you can find a flat squirrel in the middle of the road. Now I don’t mean to be cruel to the squirrel. I imagine that sometimes they are faced with a no-win situation and, with nowhere to go, get hit. But we have almost all seen the squirrel that’s in the middle of the road with a clear path to safety and he does this little dance – the “I’m scared out of my mind and don’t know what to do,” dance – and, making no decision, he ends up dead in the road. Admittedly, he could have made the wrong decision and run into oncoming traffic, but that wouldn’t have changed his outcome. Or he could have chosen to run to safety and not ended up flat that day.

While the pet peeves and flat squirrels might not seem to be related, they are when you consider the folks you know who don’t like to make decisions. All of us know some folks who get stuck in what’s sometimes called “analysis paralysis.” I spent half of my senior year of high school studying “Hamlet.” At the end of that semester, the English class exam was to write an essay on Hamlet’s fatal flaw. The English teacher wasn’t near as concerned about how the essay was written as he was whether or not Hamlet’s fatal flaw was correctly identified. About 90% of the class got it right: Hamlet’s fatal flaw was his inability to make a decision and act on it. As my teach described it, “He just kept going faster and faster in smaller circles, not getting anywhere and never accomplishing anything.”

One of the things I’m highly critical of in police cadets is when they try to avoid making a decision. They try to pass the decision off to someone else. They make an excuse as to why it’s not their decision to make. They claim they need more information before they make a choice. Anyone who has been in law enforcement for even as little as one year knows that sometimes your only choices are between two bad options. Option A… sucks. Option B is just as bad. But if you don’t make a choice and act on it, you’re stuck where you are and eventually circumstances will decide for you. That’s letting your life be controlled by fate and other people. None of us should be a fan of surrendering control of our lives to others, or to fate, so we should recognize the need to make a decision and act on it.

The decision is the critical part. Anyone who has studied Boyd’s decision-making cycle, commonly referred to as an OODA (Observe. Orient. Decide. Act) loop, know that if you don’t get to the ACT part, you are stuck going in circles. In fact, we teach how to interrupt the smooth cycling of the loop so that you can cripple your opponent’s ability to make appropriate actions. We take advantage of that so we can emerge victorious in conflicts on the street. When we arrest people and they resist, it’s to our benefit to make good decisions, as quickly as possible, and then act on them just as efficiently. Our action changes the circumstances, so we observe them, orient ourselves to the new reality we just created, make another decision and take another action.

In life, failing to take an action based on a good decision may cost you an opportunity; it may cost you something you want; it may cost you in that you have to eat at a restaurant you don’t like, but you let someone else choose – because you didn’t want to decide. In law enforcement the stakes can be quite a bit higher. If you fail to make a decision, you might lose a fight or be unable to defend yourself from an assault.

The one thing every instructor will promise you is this: If you fail to make a decision, it will be made for you and rarely, if ever, to your benefit. It can cost you big – like to the tune of your life. Make your own decisions with the best information you have available and then take the most appropriate action based on your decision in a timely fashion.

So… don’t be an indecisive squirrel.