Pete Carroll debe vivir para siempre con las consecuencias de una buena decisión que salió mal.
On February 1, 2015, the Seattle Carroll Seahawks trailed the New England Patriots 28-24 with 26 seconds left in Super Bowl XLIX. Seattle had the ball on second and a goal at New England's yard with Pro Bowl sponsor Marshawn Lynch in the backfield. New England had the worst record in the league that year, allowing their opponents to score from two yards from the goal line. All the stars were aligned to give Lynch the ball and let him slide into the end zone. But to the surprise of almost everyone, Carroll called for quarterback Russell Wilson to pass. The shot was picked up by Patriots cornerback Malcolm Butler, who fell on the ball, allowing New England to lose timeout for a surprising and improbable victory. The sports pundits were ruthless the next day. "Worst betting call in Super Bowl history," proclaimed The Washington Post. "Pete Carroll ruined the Super Bowl," wrote ESPN. Statistically, however, Carroll's appeal was solid and even brilliant, notes Annie Duke, a decision science expert and former world-class poker player. NFL teams threw 66 touchdown passes from the one-yard line that year with no interceptions. Throughout NFL record-keeping history, there was a 98% chance the game would end in a touchdown or a bust, which would have benefited Seattle. The uproar surrounding the head coach's decision is an example of what Duke calls "results thinking," or the assumption that a decision that leads to a negative result is, by definition, a bad decision. Dans son livre récent, Thinking in Bets, Duke note that the reflection on the results aggravates the mauvais choix à deux niveaux: it dissuades us from taking future judicial decisions to strengthen the mauvaises decisions that are well déroulées thanks to a coup de luck.
Awkward hindsight
We all know examples of thinking about results: hiring the star CEO who turns out to be a workplace bully or choosing a promising vacation property on a mouse-infested Airbnb. When such bets don't come to fruition, we tend to blame the board that hired the executive or the booking agency we'll never do business with again. It's a good thing that both results are anomalies that are unlikely to recur. Results thinking undermines the culture of data-driven decision-making that is necessary for digital transformation. We have more information at our fingertips than ever before, but the uncontrollable decision making that has been solidified by years of habit persists. A Business Application Research Center survey reported last year that nearly 60% of professionals said their business leaders base at least half of their decisions on intuition or experience. Of course, not all decisions require careful analysis. Choosing what to order for lunch is a lot less than making a marriage proposal or deciding to bet €3 million on a startup. The greater the risk of a bad decision, Duke says, the more important it is to trust the data. Access to this data is easier than ever. Cloud computing has democratized data storage, allowing anyone to harness the power of analytics in big data warehouses, which in turn are available as cloud services. Machine learning algorithms, which are essentially probability engines that make recommendations based on correlation, are proliferating and becoming easier to use.
Game odds
Humans, however, are still following the evolutionary curve. Many executives like to draw analogies between business and chess, but a more accurate comparison is with poker, Duke says. A chess player is in full control of his destiny and can only lose if he makes mistakes. By contrast, poker players live in a world of uncertainty where even a champion can lose to a novice in any tournament with just a few lucky breaks. Winning in the long run requires understanding the odds and making good bets over and over again knowing that they won't always pay off. The strategy Duke recommends is to be specific about the data that drives critical decisions and our level of trust in it. Instead of using terms like "significant" or "enormous," he cites known facts, calculated probabilities, and his level of confidence that the choice is correct, even if that confidence is an educated guess. When that happens, "making better decisions is no longer a matter of right or wrong, but rather a matter of calibrating all the shades of gray," he writes. Relying on data and statistical probabilities gives everyone a clear basis for making decisions and sharing responsibility for the risk of failure. Winning in business is rarely an all or nothing proposition. Walmart owns less than 10% of retail sales. Decisions that are successful 70% of the time pay huge dividends. Remember, Duke writes, "an event that should happen 30 to 40% of the time will happen often."
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