More Answers... (07/15/26): The Falsehood of the Perfect Decision

Hi Everyone, 

Here are More Answers... to help you head into the work week. Remember, you can see previous newsletters at askchrista.com/MoreAnswers.

Today's Topic: The Falsehood (and expectation) of the Perfect Decision

Decisions can feel like a lot, especially during times of austerity and scarcity as many of us have felt since the Great Recession, never quite recovering from feeling like we're on the edge of "cuts" or unexpected turns.

When we become used to that type of life, we often begin to feel like our decisions are life-sized... and for many, they are. Feeling like you may not have enough means the stakes are usually pretty high when it comes to various decisions.

It's Not the Decision, It's the Disruption

It's not like decisions these days are bigger than they used to be. Many of them are the same kinds of choices leaders have always made: when to have the right discussions, who to promote, where to invest, what to postpone, whether to hire, restructure a process, launch something new, or even move forward.

It's what's surrounding the decisions (and whether we feel confident in our predictions) that's different these days.

We've all experienced the chronic disruptions of the last 20 years as we adapt, rebuild, respond, shift, down-size again, adapt, rebuild, respond, shift... you get the picture. Sometimes we're fortunate enough to experience high growth, but even in those times, unless you have savvy, well-developed, leaders with the right mentors and team, you'll still experience shifts and even down-sizes (when what you really want is a "right-size," where existing talent can be shifted into new roles and/or developed for the future needs of the business versus cutting payroll so the finances can stay afloat as you respond to another disruption). 

It's not just the chronic disruptions, either. Timelines to show business success is much shorter than they used to be. That means budgets are tighter not just for the sake of proactive risk management during turbulent times, but also because investors and analysts frequently overreact to a shift that may soften a forecast for a quarter due to a shift in the timeline.

This also means various initiatives are scrutinized more carefully, and each one expected to demonstrate value more quickly, often with tight resources. Who hasn't felt there isn't much room left for error? Not just the human type, but perhaps the one from a machine that hasn't had appropriate investment, or a facility that's long-overdue for appropriate upgrades (or maintenance?)?

Now think about what a decision means when the stakes always. feel. high.

Scarcity Changes More Than Our Resources

I come from humble beginnings, and we lived in the world of scarcity. We lived well and within our means, but everything always felt tight. I know I'm not alone, especially these days, and recent research highlights how it changes the way we think. I find this fascinating, and as someone who advises executives and boards during such a tumultuous time for science, research, and higher education, this is  topic that comes up every day. It's also an area where I've found what can break the mindset of scarcity in the workplace, which can lead to disrupted thinking (not just operational disruptions), lack of innovation, zero risk tolerance (which also means zero learning), higher stress, and chronic dysfunction, not to mention the lagging drop in performance after good humans get tired.

If you're a regular reader of these posts, you know how much I love Hobfoll's Conservation of Resources Theory related to stress. I also appreciate researchers like Sendhil Mullainathan and Eldar Shafir, who study the effects of people feeling they don't have enough, whether that's money, time, attention, or other resources. Their work shows that scarcity narrows our attention toward the immediate problem in front of us, often leaving less mental energy for broader thinking and long-term planning (de Bruijn & Antonides, 2022).

Considering how critical those two organizational behaviors are for business success and solid organizational performance, it's no wonder scarcity is one of my hot buttons.

It's also no wonder how scarcity affects decision-making skills and how "heavy" it feels to step up and make a decision. 

The Search for the Perfect Decision

This leads me to describing a lot of what I've seen in the last many years: employees avoiding a decision because they can't seem to find the perfect one. Sure, there are times when someone avoids making a decision because they don't have the right or enough data, or perhaps they aren't comfortable making a commitment when they'll be accountable, or perhaps they are the type who prefers to blame others if something doesn't go right.

But I don't think we're talking enough about people avoiding decisions because they can't seem to find the perfect one-- because the stakes are THAT HIGH!

What does this look like? Leaders asking for, or teams revisiting, the same data. Over and over.

Multiple meetings, no ground gained. One more scenario discussed, as if it will change anything. (when it won't)

I'm all for making sure you are thorough, but not when it doesn't make a material difference. In the world of making decisions, more effort should create more clarity. Instead, when seeking the "perfect" decision, employees ask for or provide more effort as an insurance against uncertainty, and that's where the falsehood of a perfect decisions begins and ends.

We all know that very few business decisions come with complete information. If you are waiting for certainty, you're really just postponing commitment because "what if... [catastrophic, or at least worse, event happens]?"

Daniel Kahneman, Olivier Sibony, and Cass Sunstein have written extensively about judgment inside organizations, noting that improving decisions is more about improving the cadence and consistency of the decision-making process and less about eliminating every possible mistake (Kahneman et al., 2021).

Yes, please. Sign me up for that place.

Solid organizations are successful with their decisions (or not and recover) because they have processes that support thoughtful decisions, where they're able to learn quickly and adjust when circumstances change.

(they also trust in those processes so any "bad" decision isn't about the person who made it; it's about what was missing or what can be learned)

Good Decisions Age Better Than Perfect Ones

My last thought: that good decisions are because of their good outcomes. This is another falsehood that leads people to believing perfect decisions exist. 

They do not.

Well-informed decisions, appropriate decisions, "to the best of our ability" decisions exist. That is it, because there are plenty of times when decisions produce different and even disappointing results because the environment changes. Conversely, there are plenty of times when a bad or ill-informed decision produce good or surprising results because of luck or a new change.

The quality of a decision should be based on a sound process and measured by whether it was reasonable based on what was known at the time. This not only reflects reality, especially in a global economy, but also gives permission for decisions to be squared where they should be: outside the realm of perfection. This in turn builds and strengthens decision-making as a core competency within an organization, and that's a competitive advantage.

It also breaks a cycle of no one ever making a decision AND enables an organization to live outside of chronic austerity: companies can actually decide themselves out of behavioral loops that do not serve in their best interest.

For real.

Booster for the Week!

For your booster, I'm including a video from Microlearning Daily about organizational decision-making. It's called, "Organizational Decision-Making Explained Simply." It's not entertaining (the more entertaining ones weren't substantive), but brings you through the basics.

(and I think you'll enjoy the learning!) 

With kindness,

Christa

(Helpful? Interesting? Please feel free to forward and invite others to subscribe at askchrista.com/newsletter.)

References

de Bruijn, E.-J., & Antonides, G. (2022). Poverty and economic decision making: A review of scarcity theory. Theory and Decision, 92(1), 5-37. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11238-021-09802-7

Kahneman, D., Sibony, O., & Sunstein, C. R. (2021). Noise: A flaw in human judgment. Little, Brown Spark.

Shah, A. K., Shafir, E., & Mullainathan, S. (2015). Scarcity frames value. Psychological Science, 26(4), 402-412. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797614563958

(remember: most public libraries in the USA offer access to academic papers; however, if yours does not, then Google these papers or chapters to see where they are listed, how you can learn more about them, and how you can find similar papers to learn more about this topic)