If Not Now....When?

For the most part great leaders throughout history have identified themselves through certain attributes, one of the foremost of this is the ability to make decisions. Now we all make decisions every day - but usually these are relatively simple like selecting a sandwich for lunch. Needless to say the great leaders of history have had to make far weightier decisions and in the same amount of time it takes some people to choose tuna over turkey.
Maybe you don't like to be "rushed" into important decisions and therefore the solution involves thinking things over & over & over & over. Perhaps you can point to times in your life when you have "rushed" a decision and things didn't work out? But can't you also point to a time when even though you weighed everything out and thought it over you were foiled. In fact the percentage of failure to success is probably equal in both cases.
Abraham Lincoln had given General McClellan as much time to think things over as he could. Thinking things over was followed by "preparation" and "meetings" and "reviews" and who knows what else. The facts were that the Army of the Potomac was wasting valuable time doing nothing. Can you understand Lincolns frustration.....better Army, more soldiers, more supplies, more everything and rather than attack Lee one excuse after another.
In contrast General Lee though outnumbered, out supplied and with fewer men would often decide and attack so quickly (as would his main man Jackson) that the speed alone was enough to throw off the enemy.
Churchill, Julius Ceasar, Hannibal, Napoleon and even someone as recent as General Patton had the inate ability to assess and decide.
In business why has that process so often become simply to "assess" without a decision. To "think over" without finally making a move. What a waste of time and energy. Could your business run more effectively if the process of decision making was accelerated?