Nassim Taleb, well known for his ‘black swan’ and complexity approach, writes “The quality of a decision cannot be based solely on its outcome“. This statement looks paradoxical but when you think about it, it is necessarily true in complex systems – because the future is unpredictable. It is quite wrong in situations where the outcome is a straightforward consequence of the decision (like deciding to hit one’s finger with a hammer or deciding to drive drunk).
In complex systems, a lot of the outcome is due to chance. Some people even state that there is no such thing as an organization or personal strategy – there is just chance in life. Therefore, the outcome can’t obviously qualify the quality of the initial decision (and of the following ones) because it might be that we have been unlucky. Yet the decision might have been the best given the particular circumstances.
This is why there is no need to regret decisions taken in complex systems. Just move on. On the contrary one can regret eternally decisions taken in simple systems. The border between the two situations is not always easy to establish. And lessons learnt or learning becomes very difficult in complex systems without a clear causal link between a decision and the outcome.
In any case, the rating of a decision in a complex system should never been done in hindsight, but taking into account what was known or could have been known at the time of the decision. That is where many fail when condemning the remote consequences of past decisions. For example, when rating the decisions of a company CEO or of a government.
