Don't be resulting

Don’t Be Resulting

Growing up as a teenager in Oamaru, New Zealand there was one tennis court available at the local Awamoa Park. One weekend my friends and I arrived to play a game of doubles at the same time as another group. Douglas, from the other group said, “I’ll play one of you for the court. The first to win a set keeps the court for the afternoon.”        

I was nominated as the best player in our group, so I accepted the challenge. I was an untutored recreational player using a 50 year old wooden tennis racket handed down by my grandmother, but I was young and cocky and fancied my chances. 

Just then someone whispered in my ear that Douglas was the reigning North Otago champion. Uh oh! I was about to be “served” a big helping of humble pie. 

Douglas hit the tennis ball harder than anyone I had ever played against. His serves were frighteningly fast. He tried to blast me off the court with his ground strokes. I scrambled to return his shots and keep the ball in play as best I could. 

Fortunately for me, Douglas had the mother of all off-days. He kept double faulting his serves, and during match play he frequently hit the ball into the net or out of court. The more we played, the angrier he got, and the worse his play got. He swore. He threw his racket.  

I played out of my skin. Most of my first serves landed. I even aced him a few times. Everything just clicked for me that day, and I can’t explain why. 

The result? I won 6 games to 3. My friends and I got to keep the court for the afternoon. Douglas and his friends sulked off. I felt like a hero. I beat the provincial champ!

Was I more skilled than Douglas? No way. 99 times out of 100 he would have thrashed me 6 games to nil. 

What just happened?    

Annie Duke’s book “Thinking in Bets” helped me understand this phenomenon. She wrote about “resulting”, a concept she learned from her time as a professional poker player. 

“Resulting” is poker slang for a cognitive bias. When we get a “good result”, we assume that we must have made a good decision or that we are highly skilled. Conversely, when we get a “bad result”, we assume that we must have made a bad decision, or we lack the necessary skills. 

Good result = I made a good decision. I rock. 
Bad result = I made a bad decision. I suck.

Not so fast. “Resulting” discounts the role of statistical probabilities and luck.

Professional poker players know the mathematical probabilities of each hand they are dealt and place their bets accordingly. But making “good decisions” does not guarantee a successful result in a card game. A novice poker player can be ignorant of the “right” way to play, get a string of lucky hands, and beat a professional poker player on occasion.

To overcome “resulting” you need to separate luck from skill. Ask yourself, “If the same scenario was replayed 100 times, how many times would you win?“

Professional poker players perform an after action review (post mortem) on their play to prevent them from falling victim to “resulting.” Did they make good decisions based on the probabilities of the cards in front of them, regardless of whether they won or lost? 

Once you see this phenomenon you can’t unsee it. 

Annie Duke wrote about American football coach Pete Carroll at the 2015 Superbowl. It was the final minutes of a close game. He chose a play with a high probability of success, but unfortunately, the ball got intercepted, and his team lost. Obviously a bad result. The media lambasted the coach for making a foolish decision that cost his team the game.     

Annie Duke wrote that the football coach actually made “a good decision” based on the historical odds of that play succeeding, but was unlucky on that occasion. The cognitive bias of “resulting” obscured the media’s perspective. 

Here’s another example of “resulting” I learned from Nassim Taleb in his book Fooled By Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and in the Markets. 

Russian roulette is a lethal game of chance in which a player places 1 bullet into a 6 shooter pistol, spins the revolver, places the muzzle against their head and pulls the trigger.

You can theoretically “win” a game of Russian roulette 5 times in a row. You pull the trigger 5 times, the revolver clicks, but miraculously, there is no bullet in the chamber each time. Does this good result mean you made a good decision to play this game? Does it mean you are highly skilled? Obviously not. You were just lucky. 

Taleb argues that if you play Russian roulette and win millions of dollars, you might look like a success to the outside world, but you are still a “dangerous fool.”  

Just like Annie Duke’s concept of “resulting,” Taleb insists that the quality of the decision must be judged by the process, not the outcome. He emphasizes that we shouldn’t just look at the one “history” that actually happened, but all the other “histories” that could have happened but didn’t.

Whether we are analysing poker, sports, financial investments, or business decisions, “If the same scenario was replayed 100 times, how many times would you win?“

Think about how “resulting” might play out in your business.

Employee 1. Follows a robust process. Makes a well-reasoned decision. Gets a poor result.
Should you criticize them?

Employee 2. Does not follow the agreed process. Wings it. Gets a good result.
Should you praise them?

I would argue the following.

Employee 1. Praise the process they followed and the decision they made. Reassure them that they may not always win, but over a long enough time frame the odds are in their favor and good results will come. 

Employee 2. Ask them to explain the process they used. Is it repeatable? Is it trainable? If so, explore how to incorporate process improvements with your team. If they can’t explain the process they used, or it is not repeatable and trainable, let them know that “luck” probably played an outsized role. 

Yes, it’s great to be lucky, but luck is not a formula for enduring business success.  

Your goal as a leader is to train, coach, and support your team to exhibit the skills & behaviors that give the highest probability of success. Day in and day out. 

Reserve your praise for when they do. 

Don’t be resulting.

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(On a related note – also watch out for Survivorship Bias)

Until next time…
Stephen