Judged Decisions

Many of us are judged on the outcome of the decisions we make and not the reasoning or process that led to those decisions.

Now, this doesn't imply that there's something fundamentally wrong here. But more so on the difference of points of view there is to look at such things, especially as an objective observer.

As an example, when we examine investment decisions, someone who invested in a failing project will be viewed as incompetent based purely on the outcome. This is especially true if the losses were significant or if multiple stakeholders were affected.

But an objective observer can note that the investor followed proper due diligence and made reasonable decisions based on the information available at the time.

Maybe it wasn't about the numbers on paper, but on the timing of calculated risks made in a rapidly evolving market environment.

Similar dynamics play out in leadership scenarios. I find it a bit ironic and shortsighted that project failures are mostly attributed to poor decision-making, which overlooks the fact that the leader(s) made strategic choices based on thorough market analysis and risk assessment.

What's particularly interesting is how an objective observer clearly recognizes that judging solely by outcomes ignores several crucial factors: the role of unpredictable elements, the inherent limitations of human foresight, the distinction between good decision-making processes and favorable outcomes, and the impact of external variables beyond one's control.

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In The Heat Of The Moment

Truth be told, it's really hard to be an objective observer when the outcome of the decisions made affects you directly or indirectly.

Better yet, what if you're the one who made that decision?

In both cases, it's challenging to maintain objectivity when emotions, careers, or even livelihoods are at stake. A natural human tendency is to seek someone to blame or to question every step of the decision-making process in hindsight.

For myself, it's not uncommon sometimes to scrutinize decisions under a microscope, looking for that one crucial moment where things went wrong or that one detail that should have been obvious, that one sign I should have seen..

Definitely, there are good aspects to this retrospective analysis, since it's a way to learn from our mistakes, to course correct and minimize the probability of the same situation happening in the future.

Besides, in most cases, making no decision is often worse than making a well-reasoned decision that might not pan out as expected.

Perhaps, what we need is a bit of a shift, a mindset that values and evaluates the decision-making process as much as the outcomes themselves.

Because in the grand scheme of things, combining both gives us a better understanding of the decision-making process.

Of course, not that results matter less now, they still matter. But with a caveat that good processes, over time, tend to yield better outcomes, even if individual decisions don't always go as planned.


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