Good Decisions Can Have Poor Outcomes

Sometimes you run across a little nugget on the internet—a graphic, a video, a quote, whatever—that you find yourself continuing to reference, show people, or send people again and again. I have a few nuggets like these marked as favorites in the photos app on my phone. They illustrate points I find meaningful, and do so more effectively than I could with my own words.

This little comic from Work Chronicles is one of them. I find it relevant to not only to the important decisions I make in my personal life, but to the ones I make as a project manager as well:

I love this so much because when we make a decision and get an outcome we don’t want, it’s common parlance to say, “I made a bad decision.” And you might have made a bad decision. But I think it’s completely unfair to ourselves to start with the assumption that our approach to decision-making was the problem. Sometimes we make decisions thoughtlessly—and for minor decisions, that’s usually fine. But for a consequential decision, anyone who takes time to give it some thought is very likely making a good decision. Even if they don’t get the outcome they want.

I think it’s sometimes easier to blame our decisions for poor outcomes because we like that the decision was the thing we could control…and theoretically, we could control getting a better outcome next time in a similar situation if we make a better decision. But if we’re being honest, as the comic points out, what lies between a good decision and a bad outcome is unknowns and risk. And we’re much less comfortable with these because we can’t control them. We like the idea that we can use a decision to control an outcome, but all we can do with a good decision is make a good outcome more likely. We can’t eliminate unknowns and risk.

As project managers, we have some of the best tools to cope with risk and maximize good outcomes that I know of—risk registers, contingency plans, probability-and-impact matrices—but they don’t necessarily prepare us for the sinking feeling when our projects still don’t go the way we want them to. I can think of a time when I worked on an inter-organizational project with a new group of people, and I did my best to propose a process for the project that I felt would meet everyone’s needs and make the best of our situation. I wasn’t prepared for the outcome that my proposal would be ignored, I would need to work through intense hurt and frustration, and then I would need to start over on role-clarification and trust-building with the team.

Part of the lesson of this Work Chronicles comic is to face the reality that while we can influence outcomes, we can’t totally control them. If we try to accept this, we can be more emotionally prepared for results we don’t want.

But the bigger lesson—especially if you’re a project manager like me who’s making decisions all day—is to not let negative outcomes cause you to doubt your decision-making ability. You have a lot of practice making decisions. You are most likely a good decision-maker. Sure, reflect and see if today’s bad outcome has something to teach you about making slightly better decisions. But in the big picture, you likely did a good job and the outcome at hand was probably very difficult to avoid.

Don’t let a poor outcome stop you from going out there and boldly making more good decisions. Project managers are some of the best decision-makers I know. The world needs you making decisions so that we, collectively as project managers, can usher as many good outcomes into the world as possible. Even if a poor outcome slips in here and there.

The above comic was used and embedded with permission from Bob, creator of the Work Chronicles comic series. Find more comics and subscribe to receive the latest comic in your inbox daily at workchronicles.com.