Reflective Inaction: Management Style of J. Alfred Prufrock

Can we digress into some of the extreme situations of inaction and action? Agreed, these will border on neurosis and I promise to hold my tongue firmly in my cheek. Would it be worthwhile? Don't know but I'm going to attempt to describe at least one dimension of lack of action. Shall we begin?
...
There will be time, there will be time
To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet
There will be time to murder and create
And time for all the works and days of hands
That lift and drop a question on your plate;
Time for you and time for me,
And time yet for a hundred indecisions,
And for a hundred visions and revisions,
Before the taking of a toast and tea.
...
Do I dare
Disturb the universe?
In a minute there is time
For decision and revisions which a minute will reverse.
...
Should I, after tea and cakes and ices,
Have the strength to force the moment to its crisis?
...

Well, the common term for this inane intellectualization is "analysis paralysis". But there is not much real analysis going on here. Therefore, lets give it a name. What about "reflective inaction"? Why not "analysis paralysis"? Analysis is empirical. Analysis is driven by data and facts. Reflection is introverted. Analysis drives evaluation and recommends decision and actions that are aligned with business strategy and available resources. Analysis is focused on results and recognizes the law of diminishing returns. If analysis can't generate valued results, then it is reflective inaction. Equally disastrous for business organizations is compulsive action-orientation.

In the world of technology, we are regularly bewildered by the choices. You can put your critical SOA applications on a cloud, implement desktop virtualization, upgrade productivity applications, implement new backup technology, encrypt your e-mail, improve security or improve availability by creating more redundancy, blah, blah, blah ... However, not even the largest of the firms with big IT budget have the wherewithal to do everything. Kaiser Permanente could not build sufficient redundancy for HealthConnect after spending over $3.5 billion dollars! Is it a consequence of these choices and the confusion created by vendors that insidiously propels organizations into this cycle of reflective inaction? Could it be true that in the shifting sands of strategy, in a minute there is time for decisions and revisions, which a minute will reverse?

This problem cannot be cured by compulsive action-orientation. Compulsive action-orientation, most of the time, leads us to build solutions even before we have understood the problem.

IT has to aggressively focus on business results in a time box. The leaders of IT have to be business leaders with deep understanding of how their organization creates value for its clients, customers, investors and other key stakeholders.

So what does Mr. Prufrock do? Nothing. Nada. Zilch. Zero. J. Alfred Prufrock has trouble doing what he wants to do. He is deeply conflicted about everything. At some places it seems like an approach-avoidance conflict. He wants to propose but isn't sure how his proposal will be taken. This turns into an overwhelming question. Or may be not, perhaps it is not worthwhile at all. His rationalizations are far-fetched and never ending. He visualizes growing old without a resolution of his indecisiveness and his end comes while he is still hallucinating.