"Sometimes bad things happen when good people are unlucky and sometimes scoundrels get away clean. Judging decisions based on their outcomes will wind up condemning too many unlucky people and acquitting too many scoundrels".
There is lot of talk about the role of managers and leaders in decision-making. Drucker calls decision-making a "specific executive task". He goes on to say that "Managers are responsible for service results". Gino, Moore, and Bazerman in their research (No harm, no foul: The outcome bias in ethical judgments) found that "people judge the wisdom and competence of decision makers based on the nature of the outcome they obtain". The study presents a couple of convincing examples of how others may perceive your decisions differently based on the results.
Although the study focuses on ethical decision-making, we see this sort of behavior apply to our daily and work lives every day. An executive makes a decision and if it is goes well, there is celebration, bonuses, and a band of fans…and if it goes bad, there is disappointment, Monday morning quarterbacking (I call it the waking up of the nay-sayers), and depending on how bad the consequences are, some people may even lose their jobs.
"Often, the decision process is difficult to observe and so the only way we can evaluate a decision is based on its outcome", say Gino, Moore, and Bazerman.
Food for thought:
- How do you react to decisions and their outcomes?
- How does your organization react to decisions and their outcomes? Does it foster a decision-making culture or are employees content in maintaining the status quo?
What can you do?
In cases where a decision has unfavorable results, first give the decision-maker the benefit of the doubt. (It's like what my Org Behavior Professor said on the first day of class – "If this was the last day of class, your grade will be an A, now it's up to you to make it a B, C, or an F"). If you trust him/her to make a decision, then support them with the outcomes. Judge them based on the information available to them when making the decision and not on what you know now.
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