In Sion, does a good outcome prove a good decision?
In hydropower, healthcare, viticulture and alpine tourism, outcomes depend both on the choices made and on circumstances beyond managers' control. The management question is specific: how can we assess a decision without confusing the quality of the reasoning with good or bad luck?
What the literature establishes
Jonathan Baron and John C. Hershey (1988, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology) showed experimentally that knowing a decision's outcome changes assessments of its quality, even when the information available at the time of the choice remains identical. A favourable outcome leads to better assessments of the decision-maker and their reasoning. This outcome bias calls for a distinction between what was justifiable before the choice and what actually happened.
The past looks more predictable once we know it
Baruch Fischhoff (1975, Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance) showed that knowing an outcome retrospectively changes the probabilities assigned to events. Participants do not sufficiently correct for this influence when asked to judge as though they did not know the outcome. This hindsight bias complicates learning from experience: genuine uncertainty can be reconstructed as an overlooked certainty.
The premature conclusion
One might conclude that only the process should be assessed and outcomes ignored. That would go too far: outcomes remain essential for learning, but a single outcome is not enough to establish the quality of a decision. An explicit procedure can itself be inadequate; its assumptions need scrutiny as much as its implementation. (our executive and employee training programmes)
What these experiments do not demonstrate
These experiments establish effects under controlled conditions; they do not measure their magnitude in organisations in Sion. Nor do they demonstrate that a decision record alone improves operational performance. A review written only after the event nevertheless remains a fragile basis for reconstructing what the team actually knew.
A practical check in Sion
As part of SHR's decision-making programme, a team in Sion can test a record dated before the choice, documenting options, available information, uncertainties and reasoning—for hydropower maintenance, healthcare service organisation, vineyard work or the opening of a tourism facility. During the review, colleagues who were not involved in the decision first assess this record without knowing the outcome, using a shared rubric, then reassess it after the outcome is revealed, with no other new information. The measure is the proportion of cases whose rating changes, together with the direction of the change and its justification. This difference makes the assessment's sensitivity to the outcome visible, without being, on its own, proof of bias or a performance measure. 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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