Recoverable and Irrecoverable Decisions

(herbertlui.net)

23 points | by herbertl 2 hours ago

4 comments

  • buildsjets 11 minutes ago
    Timing is everything. A bad haircut decision right before the most important job interview of your life might not be recoverable.

    Great Clips or Weldon Barber, are you feeling lucky?

  • dnw 43 minutes ago
    I actually like hats, haircuts, and tattoos. Seldom we have irrecoverable decisions--except death. https://jamesclear.com/quotes/i-think-about-decisions-in-thr...

    (Also works well with LLMs, for risk assessments)

  • Insanity 1 hour ago
    Often framed as “one vs two-way doo decisions” at Amazon.

    Video of Bezos talking about this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rxsdOQa_QkM.

    IMO it’s a useful decision making strategy at times, mostly to not overthink the easily reversible.

    • pxx 1 hour ago
      what? this article is making a different point if you read past the title.

      > Conventional leadership advice suggests looking at decisions as reversible or non-reversible. Many important, non-reversible, decisions are recoverable, though.

      • Insanity 1 hour ago
        I don’t think it’s different. Recoverable == Reversible to an extend. Unless you take reversible in the strictest sense of “undo” it’s different. But you can’t “undo” a leadership decision, all you can do is later correct it and recover.

        So imo it’s splitting hairs over the same outcome.

        An example - say you introduce 5 day return to office. Half you staff leaves and you now go back to a flexible work from home model. You don’t “undo” the damage done, but you can recover. It was a costly 2-way door.

  • samsolomon 1 hour ago
    I've often thought along similar lines. I've found that indecision is almost always worse than a bad one. Very few choices are so decisive that you can't course-correct later.

    That mindset has served me well both personally and professionally.