Trial and error decision making

• Chances are you can remember your good decisions well.
• How many false starts did you make before adopting your best decisions?
• Trial and error decision making means learning by doing, trying things and changing course based on what works.
• It puts less emphasis on up-front analysis and more on taking action faster and adjusting or improvising as you go.
• Exhaustive up-front analysis was appropriate in the days when change was not so rapid.
• Taking action too soon can be seen as risky, but so is waiting too long. The more you invest in costly analysis in isolation from real world feedback, the more eggs you are putting in one basket that no one might want.
• The advantage of trail and error decision making is that you get feedback before you have incurred too much cost and become too locked into your own preferred solution.
• Ironically, therefore, taking action quickly and adjusting as you go can actually generate better decisions in some situations than you would get through exhaustive analysis prior to acting.
• Hence, making mistakes does not imply poor decision making.
• It's partly about presentation. If you say ''This is my decision'' with an air of finality, you are fully committed to one option. But if you say ''Let's try a few things and see what works'' you are saying let's discover the right decision.