Comments on: No Regrets? It’s Possible If You Think About Risks, Not Results

By: Presh Talwalkar

Presh Talwalkar — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 04:52:21 +0000

Greig Harper: Good point--there is a time value to many decisions. No use crying over spilled milk. Eric: I never thought about it this way, but you're exactly right. Results based decisions are too conservative. I think about how football coaches punt on fourth down instead of going for it. They are fearing the bad result if they go for it and fail, which would be overblown in the media. Punting is usually a bad option but its result is safer.

By: Eric

Eric — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 03:59:15 +0000

I am very happy to read this article. It has always been a pet peeve of mine when people say that a decision was a bad one because it had bad results.

The quality of a decision (and indeed, a decision-maker) should be evaluated based on the information available at the time that the call was made. Evaluation based on results encourages inefficiently conservative decision-making (especially for risk-averse parties) and sub-optimal outcomes.

Great article!

By: Greig Harper

Greig Harper — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 21:20:26 +0000

Nice post. I think it’s important to make the best decision you can at the time and then move on, get on with make the next decision.