Avoiding the “Resulting” Trap and evaluating the Quality of our plans
We’re about to move into “reflection season”, where we look back at the big dreams we had when we set out for the year, and take stock of what that means in our lives and businesses.
And most of the time, we compare our desired outcomes to our actual outcomes, and make judgments on what happened. (Which is a pretty good way to end up “shoulding” on yourself, especially this year, because this year has been a doozy for so many people facing inflation, a non-recession recession, and continued levels of turmoil in our society).
And judging the outcome of the results in isolation is just one the reflection fallacies we can step into - called resulting.
What is resulting?
As poker pro Annie Duke talks about in her book “Thinking in Bets”, resulting is judging the quality of the decision by the quality of its outcome.
The quality of the decision should not be ruled by the quality of its outcome. Those two things are independent.
In her book, she led off by telling the story of a football call to pass the ball on 4th down during a Seattle Seahawks football game.
The coach got roasted over the coals because that play led to a game-ending interception.
However, the quality of that call? Statistically, that was the right call to make in the circumstance, leading to the highest probability of the preferred outcome.
In this situation, the quality of the outcome is clearly determining how people are viewing the quality of the decision. This is called ‘resulting’ in poker.”
But no decision is free from risk. If 80% of the time, your decision would be the preferred call, resulting tells us not to judge the outcome of the 20% of the time the plan doesn’t turn out the way you expected.
And also, we don’t operate free from luck. If the plan you enact only has a 20% chance of working out, and it does work out in your favor, we can thank both the quality of our plans and the luck factor weighing in our favor.
The Four Quadrants of Outcomes
So if 2023 isn’t shaping up to be the year you had hoped - or is on the flip side outperforming your plans?
… is it an underlying opportunity due to the decisions or plans you made?
… or is it a fact of risk or luck, and the fact that no decision leads to 100% predictable outcomes?
Let’s look at the 4 possible outcomes for decisions.
We have two options for outcomes: outcomes that moved towards our goals (aka positive outcomes) and outcomes that didn’t (aka negative outcomes).
We also have two options for our plans or decisions to get to those outcomes: plans we executed, or plans we didn’t.
If you don’t have underlying actions or plans to help you make progress towards your goals? You should join us in Wednesday’s Deeper Business Dialogue to talk about the full components of a goal-setting system.
And this leads to 4 different quadrants.
When you executed your plan and got a positive result? An “as expected positive outcome”
This year, I wanted to guest on podcasts as a way to get in front of new audiences and bring on new clients. So, I brought on The Podwize Group as my podcast pitching agency and also guested on podcasts from new business colleagues. (Hi if you’re here from a podcast!)
The result? I was on about 15 new podcasts and have had a few clients from those podcast airings.
When you didn’t execute your plan as designed (or something unexpected happened) and you got a positive result? I call that luck.
I wanted to grow my newsletter, and my writing coach had a connection at Every. She pitched my piece to the editor and I got to be featured! I had no idea the connection was there at the beginning of the year.
When you executed your plan and didn’t get the outcome you’d hoped? That’s risk.
I had big plans to grow my social media following by being consistent on Instagram. So I posted at least 3 times a week for months on Instagram, incorporating reels and stories. And you know what? I didn’t see any business results from that plan, even though I’d executed it well.
When you didn’t have a clear plan - or didn’t execute the one you thought would lead to results - and therefore didn’t get the result you wanted? That’s an “as expected negative outcome”.
As I started the year, I thought I was going to bring on a team and build out the operations agency side of my business. Turns out, I like consulting and teaching a lot more than managing a day-to-day team - no agency for me (in fact, I hired one to help me run the back end of my course).
Therefore, I didn’t end up executing the plan to bring on a team and ‘missed that KPI’.
This year, I also wanted to get in better shape. And you know what needs to happen regularly (for me) to get in better shape? Lifting heavy a few times a week and really watching my diet. And, I didn’t do those leading activities at the level required to see real change this year. So, I’m getting the expected results.
What we can learn from each quadrant
As Expected Positive Outcomes: How can you do more of this, or make it more efficient?
When you’ve got a plan that’s working to move you in the direction of your goals, great! Keep it going!
And for next year, we ask: how can you capitalize on that progress and keep doing what you’re doing, with tweaks to do it more frequently or more efficiently?
For me, now that podcasting is happening on a more regular basis, I’m working to see which types of podcasts and topics are the best fit and tailoring my approach now that I’ve got data.
An unexpected surprise: How can you increase your surface area for luck?
Maybe you’ve stumbled into an industry or vertical that led to clients, or found an unexpected referral partner. This is great - and those results likely didn’t come completely from out of the blue. How can you uncover the conditions that helped generate that “luck”, and see what you can build into your plans and systems for next year?
An unexpected negative outcome: What can we learn about our plans or decision making process?
Sometimes, risk happens because we don’t have all of the information about market conditions. Like, if you’d built your platform on Twitter, who could have expected that Elon would crater the platform? Or know if Instagram was going to prioritize Reels or Carousels?
Or, Zoom Fatigue was real, online courses didn’t sell as well after 3 years in the pandemic (even if your course was amazing), and the cost of eggs has stayed high all year long. 2023 was a challenging year for so many businesses due to real macro-economic and micro-industry factors.
This is an opportunity to step back and ask, “did I make the best plans or decisions I could with the information that I had? And now, with this new information, what changes will I make going forward?”
For instance, I’ve quit posting on Instagram. There was always a risk that regular posting wouldn’t pay off, and it’s gotten even harder these days to grow and be discovered. So, with that information, I’ve shifted course for myself.
An as expected negative outcome: How can you improve your systems - or get really honest with your capacity?
A lot of times we take on goals we think we want to accomplish - yet don’t have the capacity to take on the underlying actions that will bring us to those goals. Because, life keeps life-ing in the short term even as we have big dreams.
Or there’s another kind of gap - we have an ambitious plan where there’s a skills gap, a safety gap, or a clarity gap where the steps to execute that plan are too large or too challenging.
This is where we address our systems. How can we (or who can we hire to help) improve our systems and processes so that doing the underlying actions and habits to achieve our goals can be easier? Where do you otherwise need support?
But ultimately, this may be a call to get really honest that this goal, and these projects and actions to make it happen, are just not within our capacity this year.
And say no to taking on so much, on our social-media-fueled, achievement-culture driven timelines, and stop beating ourselves up over a red KPI year over year.