How important is it to be sure?

The best decisions are borne out of recognition that the only certainty is uncertainty.

THINK ON IT: How important is it to be sure?

There’s nothing quite like the sure bet. That proposition that you can’t lose.

Who doesn’t want that? Especially when there’s a lot on the line, when there’s no Plan B.

The trouble is, it doesn’t exist. The only certainty is uncertainty. And it’s how we evaluate that uncertainty that determines whether a decision we make will be a good one or not.

Any decision involves a choice. Two choices actually. There’s the decision itself, of course. But there’s also a choice in the way that decision is made, and here there are two options. We can get comfortable knowing that we don’t have all the information (hint: we never will) or we can become anxious about what we don’t and probably can’t know. 

The first option leads us to gathering what information we do know and assigning probabilities to a range of possible outcomes based on the uncertainties that exist. The second option leads us to relying on our estimation of the outcomes of similar past decisions–our gained experience, if you will.

The fault in that approach, however, is that even prior decisions and their outcomes were steeped in uncertainty and it’s likely that much of that uncertainty still remains hidden from us today. As much as we’d like to take comfort in our past decision making prowess, we must accept that past behavior, no matter how good, is not indicative of future results.

Strategic leaders recognize this. They know that no decision can be made from certainty. The best they can do is to make a decision based on their assessment of the probabilities of an outcome. 

What’s the chance of success of that decision you need to make today? 

[Premium members] If you’d like a framework to evaluate the probability of a decision read-on. Become a Premium Member.

“Experience is not what happens to a man; it is what man does with what happens to him." — Aldous Huxley

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