Your confidence in decisions and outcomes

You can be confident in a decision, without being confident in what outcome will occur.

This is the only honest way to approach a decision.

Leaders of data teams are full-time decision makers.

- Which project to prioritize?

- Who to hire, promote, fire?

- Which vendor to work with?

- What process to implement?

- Which technology to decommission?

Because decision making is so crucial to our job, we naturally want confidence in our decisions. But we often confuse decisions and outcomes (i.e. the results of the decision). And we express our confidence about the results we expect, rather than in our decision.

But when a decision doesn’t lead to the result we want, we get frustrated, lose our confidence, and the trust of our team. Placing confidence in the unknown eviscerates our conviction over time.

You can think about this differently…

- Decision Outcomes are influenced by a vast number of variables that you don’t control; however, decisions are made based on your evaluation of facts, experiences, and desired outcomes.

Why does this matter?

As a leader, placing your confidence in results is going to lead to a rocky road for you and your team. There are too many things you can’t control about the result.

Placing your confidence in your decision making process, allows you to trust what you can control (your decision) without trusting in the unknown future.

It can also phrased like this:

“Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.”

I’m glad you are here,

Sawyer