In Sion, does a good outcome prove a good decision?
When a management team reviews an investment or an organisational change, it usually already knows the outcome. The managerial question is precise: how can it assess the quality of the choice without letting the outcome rewrite what was reasonable to decide?
What the literature establishes
Jonathan Baron and John C. Hershey (1988, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology) showed experimentally that a decision's outcome influences assessments of its quality, even when the information available at the time of the choice remains identical. A favourable outcome leads to a more positive assessment of the decision-maker than an unfavourable one. This outcome bias conflates two distinct things: the quality of the reasoning and what actually happened.
When outcomes make the past seem predictable
Baruch Fischhoff (1975, Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance) showed that knowing an event's outcome changes retrospective estimates of its probability. Once the outcome is known, it appears more predictable than it did to someone who did not know it. This mechanism, distinct from outcome bias, complicates lessons-learned reviews: the original uncertainty becomes difficult to reconstruct.
The premature conclusion
One might conclude that decisions should be assessed without ever considering their consequences. That would go too far: outcomes remain essential to learning, particularly when they recur in comparable situations. The useful distinction is to examine first whether the choice was defensible given the available information, and then what its outcome genuinely warrants revising. (our executive and employee training programmes)
What the evidence does not establish
These experiments establish effects under controlled conditions; they do not measure their magnitude in Valais businesses. Nor do they demonstrate that a review conducted without knowing the outcome will, by itself, improve future decisions. In practice, a file reconstructed after the event may already incorporate hindsight: keeping a record at the time of the choice is therefore essential to the proposed test.
A practical check in Sion
As part of SHR's decision-making programme, an exercise in Sion could concern hydropower maintenance, care organisation, a winegrowing investment or an alpine tourism offering. Before the choice, the team would record the options, available information, uncertainties and selected criteria; during the review, evaluators would assess this file using the same rubric, some with the outcome disclosed and others without it. The measure would be the difference between the two groups' average scores for the quality of the reasoning, with their written justifications retained. A difference would not, on its own, prove bias, but would flag cases for re-examination before assigning credit or responsibility. To go further: explore the Decision-making training in Sion in the canton of Valais, or browse our executive and employee training programmes in Switzerland.
In pictures: Decision-making in Sion
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