I think the first time I heard the quip decision-based evidence-making it was Jonathan Korman in 2019, but I just found it again in the title of an MIT Sloan Management Review paper from 2010.
I think you nailed it. Those of us who gnashed our teeth against the failures of evidence-based decision-making fundamentally misunderstood how shit gets done, and fundamentally misunderstood how reality operates. For one thing, there's way too much evidence out there to go and collect it, if you did you wouldn't know what actually mattered amongst everything you'd collected anyway, and reality would've changed in the meantime anyway.
So you have to go and just do stuff. Ideally cheap, safe-to-fail stuff. Such action could be considered reckless DBEM because you're not trying to predict what's going to work, and you're doing work that might not work. But trying stuff is the only way to begin to understand the dynamics of the terrain, thus scaffolding even the possibility of EBDM.
I've started calling the operating approach you described "the double game", and I think innovation and research can only really happen when either you or someone up the chain from you is good at this game:
One game: you have no choice but to contend with uncertainty at some point, ideally by trying safe-to-fail probes and muddling through, frequently confused and thwarted. You must actively create conditions where the evidence can surprise you, leading you to stumble on much better ideas than you could've thought of beforehand. You must release your grip on future visions and let things unfold as they need.
The other game: you have no choice but to present a surface of confidence and progress to rivals, investors and others. You must tout confirmatory evidence and share no surprises, presenting the current best idea as if it were the plan all along. You must rally everyone around future visions and tell stories of how wonderful it's definitely going to be.
Or, simply:
"The deliberate strategy is what we present to the shareholders. The emergent strategy is what we actually do.” – a Japanese CFO quoted by J P Castlin
Thanks for the thoughts, Tom! Glad you enjoyed it. That's a damn good quote. Adding to your double game 2x2: that first option is like playing the double game on hard mode. I think the costs of a deliberate strategy are too much to bear for some people; but really they're not much. Maybe that's one reason we see technical / non-technical founder pairs. Startups are playing a high-stakes double game, and their competition is as much cracked engineers as it is grifters.
It's hard to navigate the decision-making process. It's like trying to track our thoughts themselves. I love this examination of doing then reasoning vs. reasoning then doing- the ways we strategically interact with the games of life and change and success are endlessly interesting and worth investigating. Keep making this kind of content please!
Didn’t mean to ChatGPT-style over-summarise your article full of good stuff, just thought you’d like the aphorism. I first heard it from one of my gurus John-Roger but he was a notorious magpie so I assume it came from somewhere else originally. The cozyweb is awash in Lincoln’s “most people are about as happy as they make up their minds to be” but not this one. 🤔
Possible origin: “Men first make up their minds (and the smaller the mind the sooner made up), and then seek for the reasons; and if they chance to stumble upon a good reason, of course they do not reject it. But though they are right, they are only right by chance.”
Many more should block someone who is acting as tough they are providing serious content on the first "shit done" run into in their writing than do, I am afraid.
I wish I could source the quote, "Most people make up their minds, then make up their reasons." Nice puzzle, btw. Found mate in 3.
Another article that could have been a quote. Stealing that. Will attribute to you until otherwise sourced!
What 3 moves worked? Haven’t played chess in years….
Enjoyed this piece a lot.
I think the first time I heard the quip decision-based evidence-making it was Jonathan Korman in 2019, but I just found it again in the title of an MIT Sloan Management Review paper from 2010.
I think you nailed it. Those of us who gnashed our teeth against the failures of evidence-based decision-making fundamentally misunderstood how shit gets done, and fundamentally misunderstood how reality operates. For one thing, there's way too much evidence out there to go and collect it, if you did you wouldn't know what actually mattered amongst everything you'd collected anyway, and reality would've changed in the meantime anyway.
So you have to go and just do stuff. Ideally cheap, safe-to-fail stuff. Such action could be considered reckless DBEM because you're not trying to predict what's going to work, and you're doing work that might not work. But trying stuff is the only way to begin to understand the dynamics of the terrain, thus scaffolding even the possibility of EBDM.
I've started calling the operating approach you described "the double game", and I think innovation and research can only really happen when either you or someone up the chain from you is good at this game:
One game: you have no choice but to contend with uncertainty at some point, ideally by trying safe-to-fail probes and muddling through, frequently confused and thwarted. You must actively create conditions where the evidence can surprise you, leading you to stumble on much better ideas than you could've thought of beforehand. You must release your grip on future visions and let things unfold as they need.
The other game: you have no choice but to present a surface of confidence and progress to rivals, investors and others. You must tout confirmatory evidence and share no surprises, presenting the current best idea as if it were the plan all along. You must rally everyone around future visions and tell stories of how wonderful it's definitely going to be.
Or, simply:
"The deliberate strategy is what we present to the shareholders. The emergent strategy is what we actually do.” – a Japanese CFO quoted by J P Castlin
(Sinek's still a grifter tho)
Playing with a double game 2x2
If you only play the uncertainty game: you become illegible, unpredictable and seen as risky or wasteful.
If you only play the certainty game: you become a corporate sociopath - optimising for perception and ladder climbing, creating little of worth.
If you're bad at both: you become irrelevant - neither trusted with resources nor capable of learning from reality.
If you're good enough at both: you increase your luck surface area and become antifragile.
Thanks for the thoughts, Tom! Glad you enjoyed it. That's a damn good quote. Adding to your double game 2x2: that first option is like playing the double game on hard mode. I think the costs of a deliberate strategy are too much to bear for some people; but really they're not much. Maybe that's one reason we see technical / non-technical founder pairs. Startups are playing a high-stakes double game, and their competition is as much cracked engineers as it is grifters.
It's hard to navigate the decision-making process. It's like trying to track our thoughts themselves. I love this examination of doing then reasoning vs. reasoning then doing- the ways we strategically interact with the games of life and change and success are endlessly interesting and worth investigating. Keep making this kind of content please!
Didn’t mean to ChatGPT-style over-summarise your article full of good stuff, just thought you’d like the aphorism. I first heard it from one of my gurus John-Roger but he was a notorious magpie so I assume it came from somewhere else originally. The cozyweb is awash in Lincoln’s “most people are about as happy as they make up their minds to be” but not this one. 🤔
https://archive.org/details/thoughtsandapop00whatgoog/page/n21/mode/2up
Possible origin: “Men first make up their minds (and the smaller the mind the sooner made up), and then seek for the reasons; and if they chance to stumble upon a good reason, of course they do not reject it. But though they are right, they are only right by chance.”
— Richard Whately
Fantastic, thank you! Even better in expanded form
Many more should block someone who is acting as tough they are providing serious content on the first "shit done" run into in their writing than do, I am afraid.
Yes.