The dice test: A simple way to improve your decision making at work

Just because things worked out well, it doesn’t mean you made the right decision.

A big trap in management is to judge decisions on single outcomes.

We think people get the decision right when things work out well.

And we think people get the decision wrong when things don’t work out well.

But the best leaders judge decisions:

• In the short term: by the quality of the decision process
• In the long term: by the pattern of outcomes over time

A single outcome tells us very little about the quality of a decision, given the role of uncertainty.

Because decision making under uncertainty (i.e. most decisions) is more akin to placing a bet on probability than to knowing exactly how things will play out.

The simplest way to conceptualise this is to imagine we had to make a decision on whether a regular six-sided dice would land on 4 and below OR 5 and above, when rolled.

If we picked 5 and above it would obviously be the wrong choice, even if the dice landed on 5 or 6.

And if we picked 4 and below, it would have be the right choice, even if the dice landed on 5 or 6.

The point here is to separate the choice from any individual outcome.

In the short term, we can look at the decision-making process and see it was flawed.

In the long term – as the dice is rolled again and again – we will see that the decision is wrong, based on the pattern of results.

So, next time someone in your team makes a decision – next time you make a decision – focus less on whether it worked and more on whether it was well made.