Two weeks ago, I talked about making decisions. I laid out a list of eight steps to making a better decision. In working with a management team last week, we found a missing piece – going back afterwards and assessing whether that was a good or bad decision.
Take the following example: should we launch a new product line?
Maybe a year later we would say that was a super decision, or maybe it was a huge flop. Hindsight has its uses. By assessing both good decisions as well as bad ones, we can see what really was the cause of the outcome and utilize that in future decision making.
What assumptions were correct?
Were the effects/outcomes as predicted?
What were the unintended consequences?
Were our projections of growth correct?
What was easy to implement and what was hard and why?
What should we have also done?
What should we have skipped?
If you had a particularly successful outcome, was it due to your rollout strategy, or because a big competitor pulled out of the market just at that moment?
Don’t assume you are better than you are. This week, reexamine a decision you made recently and see what you and your team can learn and apply to the next decision. Make the next decision a better one.