Recoverable and Irrecoverable Decisions
herbertlui.net
herbertlui.net
but ask yourself with regard to every present difficulty: 'What is there in this that is unbearable and beyond endurance?' You would be ashamed to confess it! And then remind yourself that it is not the future or what has passed that afflicts you, but always the present, and the power of this is much diminished if you take it in isolation and call your mind to task if it thinks that it cannot stand up to it when taken on its own.
In the last 15–20 years, many people have been forced into an uncomfortable moment due to job loss (Great Recession, COVID, AI etc). They have learned to recover. Could this be why we see more entrepreneurs than ever before now?
https://cbsaustin.com/news/nation-world/major-us-companies-g...
Jamming on the parking brake, when going 90, down the highway, is a bad idea.
I sometimes miss a turn, or don't plan well enough to be in the correct lane, when I arrive at the intersection.
What I do, is go "D'oh!", continue to the next intersection, then either make a U-turn (if legal), or turn onto a side street, with the intention of recovering my intended direction.
What I often see people in the same situation do, is jam on the accelerator, swerve across six lanes of traffic, and screech into their turn.
That may get them where they are going, but it also has a very real chance of earning them a ticket or a stay in hospital.
My way takes a bit longer, but no ticket, no accident.
Except when they get in an accident trying to force it. Or when they were too distracted unnecessarily overtaking someone near their turn.
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.
> Conventional leadership advice suggests looking at decisions as reversible or non-reversible. Many important, non-reversible, decisions are recoverable, though.
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.
Those words mean entirely different things.
One is about reversing a decision. One is about reversing an outcome.
Irreversible decisions mean decisions without backsies. Recoverable decisions mean decisions that leave the potential for survival and a comeback.
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You cannot (typically) reverse a poorly-reasoned midlife-crisis divorce. But you can recover by getting one's life in order.
You cannot (typically) reverse a disastrous corporate merger. But you can recover, by identifying a better path forward.
You cannot (typically) reverse a money transfer after buying into a scam. But you can recover, by continuing to earn and save.
You can change your streaming service name from "HBO" to "Kansas" to "Pumpernickle" to "Cheese Please", and then revert to "HBO". And leverage the PR waves from a mea culpa. And, snowball the PR into a reputation as a lovable rake, by doing the same thing every year around April 1st.
But, you cannot reverse adding caffeine to 7-up after adding caffeine to 7-up, and resume your famous marketing campaign of "No caffeine. Never had it. Never will."
Only difference is time. Much like an eventually consistent transactions, recoverable decisions have propagation latency.
The breaking part here is that will you able to survive until the recovery is complete?
In nearly all circumstances where you're actually fretting over the decision, you're choosing between two reasonable options. It's unlikely one option will be substantially more recoverable than the other, and if you're still considering it anyways you likely have a good reason.
I think the better way of evaluating tough decisions is to think about which choice leaves you in a better position to make the next choice. The real dilemma in almost every decision is the uncertainty, and typically you'll learn a lot more from trying one thing than the other. Oftentimes also choosing a particular order to try different options leaves more options open later on.
Further, I notice that a lot of people see dilemmas where they don't exist. Practically every week I'm in a meeting where there is a heated discussion of whether to do A or B when we have to do A regardless of whether or not we do B and almost invariably the question of whether or not to do B will be answered by doing A.
Sizing the decision also allows you to avoid the other side of the coin of "analysis paralysis," which is "extinction by instinct," where you proceed purely on pattern matching. Obviously, you need to rely on reflexes in situations where you don't have time to calculate, like maintaining your balance or pulling your hand away from something very hot. And there is value in letting the smell of smoke, a fire alarm, a cry for help, or other critical interrupts immediately redirect your attention to a new action.
My frustration with the “reversible decision” or “recoverable decision” framing is that it ignores the need to acknowledge the irrevocable commitment of resources and the opportunity cost of a course of action, and use those to guide the level of planning needed.
Planning is expensive, and overplanning is a waste. Still, a prudent survey of likely risks and outcomes should encourage you to plan in advance for certain likely situations and undertake mitigation efforts.
That mindset has served me well both personally and professionally.
Great Clips or Weldon Barber, are you feeling lucky?
(Also works well with LLMs, for risk assessments)
Second point is: You don't need to reverse the decision you took, instead you may find a way to fix the impact but not the root-cause.
It's like when one fucks up the MySQL replication and the data consistency is corrupted. One can manually (and slowly) fix the inconsistency with downtime. Or, spin up a whole new cluster from an existing well-known node/state. Some entities may be missing, but you could gradually add them back later.
Not a reversible, but recoverable decision.
Amazon goes by with one-way vs two-way door decisions internally. Sometimes adding much bureaucracy to the equation. Just-do-it/Bias-for-action aspect usually don't go as far as the recovery period prolongs.