Failing unconventionally

Shane Parrish interviewed Annie Duke (author of Thinking in Bets) about decision making, and how she applied her background in cognitive science to an illustrious career as professional poker player which included a World Series gold bracelet. It’s 2hrs of really interesting conversation, but I wanted to note one key takeaway I got from it.

Resulting

Annie talked about the dangers of using only the outcome of a decision to determine the quality of the decision, something she calls resulting.

If the quality of the outcome was bad, then the decision must have been bad, right?

Her book opens with an example from the 2015 Super Bowl.

Let me quickly set the scene.

It’s the Seahawks vs the Patriots. The Seahawks have the ball and are right on the edge of the end zone. But they are down by 4 points and with only 26 seconds left on the clock, this will be the last play of the game.

The good news however is that the Seahawks have Marshawn Lynch on their team who, if you hand him the ball to run, is “borderline unstoppable in this part of the field”. He’s been doing it all season, in “beast mode”, running in touch downs for fun. It’s the obvious play to win the Super Bowl.

But the Seahawks coach Pete Carroll doesn’t call a run play, but instead throws a pass. The pass is intercepted, and it’s game over. They lose the Super Bowl.

And instantly you can hear it start with the commentator:

“I’m sorry but I can’t believe the call. I cannot believe the call”

And of course Pete Carroll is publicly crucified for the decision.

But consider two alternative outcomes?

1) Imagine the pass was completed.

How different would things have looked then? The Seahawks win. Carroll would be considered a genius—the mastermind that outwitted Belichick. The call would live in Super Bowl infamy—just as the Sporting Green article above suggests—but for all the right reasons.

Maybe that’s obvious, but consider another alternative

2) Imagine a run play is called, the ball is handed off to Marshawn Lynch, but he is unsuccessful in getting over the line.

So they still lose the game. But the newspapers the next day won’t be plastered with headlines lambasting Carroll’s decision. He would have failed, but failed conventionally, which doesn’t leave you as exposed and is easier for everyone else to accept.

So what’s the relevancy for workplaces?

The point here is that if your workplace has a culture of resulting, it will kill innovation.

If you are a manager, and a “result-er” (which Anne says we all kind of are by default), then you are telling people don’t make an unusual choice, don’t try anything innovative or unexpected, because if it doesn’t work, you’ll be hung out to dry.

If you know your manager is going to be looking at the outcomes of your decision, and doing some critique when things turn out poorly—overly relying on the outcome in order to derive the decision quality—then there’s an incentive for you to make safer decisions that can stand up to criticism more easily. You’ll take less risks, make more conventional choices that offer you some insurance.

There’s a huge amount of talk currently about good failure, and how companies should embrace failure that leads to validated learning. But I enjoyed this new angle on resulting that I hadn’t heard before.