Learn
Recording decision outcomes without rewriting the decision
A decision outcome is what actually happened after a choice was made. Recording it beside the original reasoning is how a person or a team learns whether their judgment works. It is also where most organizations stop, because outcomes arrive late and are often uncomfortable.
Good decisions, bad outcomes
A sound decision can end badly, and a careless one can end well. Poker players have a word for judging a decision by its result alone: resulting. A player who bets correctly and loses to an unlikely card made a good decision; one who bets recklessly and wins made a poor one and was paid for it.
Business faces the same problem with fewer cards. Unless the reasoning was recorded before the result, there is no way to tell which kind of decision you made.
What to record
Three things, written once the result is reasonably clear. First, what happened, measured against the criteria set at the time. Second, whether the main assumptions held, one by one. Third, a plain judgment of the decision itself, kept apart from the result: given what was known, was this a sound choice?
A small set of categories helps, such as successful, partly successful, unsuccessful, and too early to tell. A messy result recorded honestly teaches more than a perfect metric that never arrives.
When to look
Set the review date at the moment of decision, based on when the result should become visible: ninety days for a pricing change, a year for a new office, three years for a property. Without a date, reviews happen only when something goes wrong, and the record fills with failures while the successes go unexamined.
The common mistake
Recording only the results that flatter. When outcomes are filed selectively, the archive tells a story of good judgment that the full record would not support. The other mistake is editing the original reasoning in light of the result, which makes every decision look either wise or unlucky, and teaches nothing.
Outcomes in the Decision Passport
In Argumont, the Human Decision is recorded separately from the Judge's Verdict, and the Outcome can be added later to the Decision Passport. A saved Passport version cannot be overwritten, so the original reasoning stays as it was when the result arrives. Across many decisions, a team can see whether the Verdicts it followed, and the ones it overrode, turned out as the record suggested.
The office that fell short
A company opened a regional sales office expecting $1.5 million in new annual revenue within a year. Eleven months later the office has booked $400,000. Judged by the result alone, the office was a mistake. The record tells a fuller story: the decision rested on three assumptions, and two held. The third, that the existing pipeline in the region was worth $2 million, had been marked unverified at the time and proved to be worth $700,000. The lesson is not to avoid such expansions. It is to verify pipeline figures before setting a target on them.
Questions
- What is the difference between a decision and an outcome?
- A decision is the choice made with the information available at the time. An outcome is what happened afterwards, which also depends on luck and on events nobody could foresee.
- How soon should I record an outcome?
- Set the date when you decide, based on when the result should be visible. Record a partial result if that is all you have, and add to it later as a new entry.
Further reading
Bring Argumont a Decision worth challenging.
Start with a paid 60 day pilot on your own real Decisions.