Decision making can be a tough thing, particularly when there is a lot on the line. I’ve talked before about how no decision can be 100%, and some quotes I found from Annie Duke (in her book “Thinking In Bets“) helped to reinforce that.
First, she goes back to the idea that a decision is separate from the outcome. They’re related, for sure, but a great decision doesn’t guarantee a great outcome.
“What makes a decision great is not that it has a great outcome. A great decision is the result of a good process, and that process must include an attempt to accurately represent our own state of knowledge. That state of knowledge, in turn, is some variation of “I’m not sure.”
Later in the book she takes it further, with a thought that really can apply to business too. When you make a decision for your company, you’re really making a bet on the future and how that decision will impact it.
“Over time, those world-class poker players taught me to understand what a bet really is: a decision about an uncertain future. The implications of treating decisions as bets made it possible for me to find learning opportunities in uncertain environments. Treating decisions as bets, I discovered, helped me avoid common decision traps, learn from results in a more rational way, and keep emotions out of the process as much as possible.”
You can never be sure of the decision you make and the outcome may not go the way you want, but if you analyze properly and bet carefully, you’ll win more than you lose.
