“When the present determines the future, but the approximate present does not approximately determine the future”
This entry today isn’t going to focus on technology…but why a “aha” moment got clarity to me…
Running a business can be extremely challenging, as I’m sure many people have figured out over the years – so it’s not surprising that decisions made in the now can have far reaching impacts and ramifications. That goes both for the good and the bad.
Most business decisions are made with an immediate financial goal in mind or with a long term strategy. Either way, a business decision is long standing and most of them can’t be unmade.
Drawing a comparison here, I guess the most important aspect of making decisions, be they business or personal, is to make an informed decision.
When decisions are made, without the backing of factual data, the outcomes more or less fall into either of these three categories:
- A positive, unexpected benefit;
- A negative, unexpected detriment occurring in addition to the desired effect, or
- A perverse effect contrary to what was originally intended;
The law of unintended consequences pretty much lists ignorance as the top of the causes for this. On the other hand, no level of analysis or consulting with specialists can ever account for human stupidity.
If you don’t take the law of unintended consequences into account when you make decisions, you end up with an uncontrolled outcome. That’s also true with personal decisions.
I’ve recently had an epiphany which led me to realise that at some point my own decision(s) weren’t quite that informatively backed as I’d like them to have been. This realisation pretty much meant that I had to re-visit previously made decision(s). And as the law of nature state – nothing can ever be unmade – it pretty much means there’s only two things you can realistically do.
- Attempt to change the previous outcome, and
- Don’t be an idiot and make the same mistake again
Of course that’s easier said than done – but at least I’ve realised that I’ve made a mistake (isn’t that the first step towards redemption?) somewhere along the line and now it’s just up to me to locate and fix it…
yeah, right…life’s like a box of chocolate and if I approach the “fix” with the same ignorant/uninformed position, aren’t I just going make the same mistake all over again, and hence leave the outcome into the same hands that caused the first set of results?
So now it’s time for me to investigate as much as I can about my decision(s) – ask a friend and mentor for some advice – and move on to address the “wrong” results