Results Matter

As the title of this blog suggests, it is our belief at Michael Rainey and Associates that outcomes (results) matter. A long-held belief within this organization is that the crux of leadership can be hung on two ‘hooks’: (1) the job getting done and (2) the team coming together. In general, the job getting done at the expense of the welfare of the team will result in no longer having a team. Similarly, the team coming together at the expense of the job being done will result in no longer having a job! Both aspects of leadership are critical and equally important.

Outcomes Are Only Known After the Fact

The challenge for leaders operating in dynamic and competitive environments is that the result of our decisions (that determine if the job is getting done) will only be known after-the-fact (after an event or series of events takes place). Leaders (and teams) may then be at risk of evaluating the plan, or the series of decisions surrounding the plan, solely based on whether the outcome was ‘good’ or ‘bad’.

Decision Quality vs. Outcome Quality

This tendency to equate decision quality with outcome quality was popularized by cognitive psychologist and professional poker player Annie Duke, author of Thinking in Bets: Making Smarter Decisions When You Don’t Have All the Facts. Duke explains that the challenge with “resulting” (formally known as outcome bias) lies in the reality that well‑reasoned, thoughtful decisions made amid uncertainty and ambiguity can still fail. Conversely, a poor set of decisions or flawed processes may nonetheless produce the desired outcome and appear successful despite their weaknesses.

Although it can be frustrating, most of us as leaders have learned, often the hard way, that this reality shows up far more often than we’d like to admit. David Snowden’s work in decision‑making highlights that this kind of situation is characteristic of a complex environment, where the relationships between cause and effect can only be understood in hindsight. In these settings, outcomes are “emergent and heavily influenced by interactions, timing, and stochastic effects.” Instead of giving us predictable patterns, complex contexts generate behaviors shaped by numerous interacting factors, many of which fall completely outside the control of the leaders making the decisions.

Learning Through Safe-to-Fail Experiments

As such, Mr. Snowden explains through the Cynefin Framework that complex settings require leaders to experiment with safe‑to‑fail probes (smaller scale, multiple low‑risk experiments instead of one large, high-stakes solution) to observe what patterns emerge from the outcome of the probe in order to adapt accordingly.

When leaders take this approach, they acknowledge that in complex environments there is no single “right answer” available in advance, an understanding that helps counter the downsides of outcome bias and after‑the‑fact resulting. Rather than prematurely abandoning (or continuing) a strategy based solely on an incomplete interpretation of the outcome, this mindset encourages leaders to “learn, sense, and probe” within complex environments. In doing so, outcomes are treated not as final judgments but as real‑time data points. These intermediate results become opportunities to learn, update our understanding of uncertain environments (sense), and determine the most appropriate next step (probe).

Leading With Curiosity Instead of Certainty

In short, when operating in the complex domain, leadership becomes less about certainty and the desire to control outcomes (as it is not possible to do so!) and instead promotes curiosity, intentional experiments, and responsiveness in the face of uncertainty. Which, in turn, increases the likelihood of long-term achievement of desired outcomes (success!).