In summer 2024, I left a 12 year career as a charter school authorizer. (An authorizer is an agency that monitors and holds accountable charter schools.) It was great job that provided for my material means and was intellectually fulfilling. Was leaving a good decision? I can unequivocally say it was – but not for the reason you may think.
I care about how people make decisions on a deep, analytical level. Making good decisions is a skill that can be learned and practiced. And I think if we all made better decisions, we would live better lives. In a broad, global sense, I think if we, our bosses, our bosses’ bosses, our governing boards, our schools… if we all paid closer attention to how we make decisions, the accumulation of our choices would make a huge difference for the things we care about.
You probably made a lot of decisions already today. What to wear, what to eat, to drink that fourth cup of coffee or not – these are the kinds off little decisions we make all the time. And we just, like, do it. Maybe you think about some different options or run a few ‘what if’ scenarios in your head. Then you choose. No big deal. And for most of the decisions we make in our day to day routines, those approaches are probably perfectly fine. In these cases, you don’t need much more information or processing to get to the outcome you’re seeking. In fact, spending more effort on these kinds of decisions is probably overkill.
Sometimes, we have to make big, weighty decisions. It might be your responsibility to choose the best health plan option to cover all all your coworkers and their families. Or maybe you have to make a recommendation about funding (or not) a project at work or a community initiative. Or perhaps you have to evaluate a stack of resumes for a job opening on your team. These big decisions have much farther reaching ramifications – beyond just my personal fashion preference – and can affect other lives.
These decisions clearly need more careful attention because they are, after all, more important than whether your shirt matches your pants today. (Don’t worry. You look fly. But you can always make a different choice tomorrow and no one is hurt.) So what’s your process for those bigger, weighty decisions? Would better guardrails help get to a the right outcome?
Listen to any “morning after” analysis of last night’s big game and you are likely to hear lots of opinions about the coach’s decision making. How many of those analyses focus exclusively on the outcome of the play – whether or not your team scored the touchdown? Conversely, how many of those analyses break down the information the coach had at the time of the decision point, and how effectively the coach used that information? Do you ever hear the analysts discussing the probabilities of certain outcomes and comparing those to the coach’s decision process? Those kinds of conversations are pretty rare.
So, what makes a decision good or bad? What matters more: the outcome or the process? Which do we analyze more after the we know the decision outcome? I am going to assert that, although we tend to react to the outcomes, the process is actually the more important part of the decision – and it’s the part we can (mostly) control. But the process is fraught. Our brains are marvelous – and deceitful. We process a lot of information, but not always accurately. We need information to inform our decisions, but we don’t always have it. It’s tough to navigate that kind of uncertainty.
In the weeks and months ahead, I plan to use this format to share information and reflect about decisions making. I want to share with you what I know about how we approach decisions and how we can improve. I also want to reflect on my own decisions (and those I observe) and discuss how I and others can create a good decision process.
So, was smart of me to leave my job? I don’t yet know the outcome of that decision. I only know I haven’t failed yet. Will it work out the way I hope? Maybe. I am confident it will. I had some pretty good information to use in weighing my options to stay (there will be trouble) or go (it will be double). And I think I used it as well as I could even in light of the things I did not or could not know. By way of my process, it was a great decision to start a new venture. As for the outcome, only time – and more decisions – will tell.
No responses yet