A bad outcome doesn’t mean you made a bad decision. An excerpt from Loonshots.
Analyzing the decision process behind a move I’ll call level 2 strategy, or system mindset.
The principle applies broadly. You can analyze why an investment went south. The company’s balance sheet was too weak, for example. That’s outcome mindset. But you will gain much more from analyzing the process by which you arrived at the decision to invest. What’s on your diligence list? How do you go through that list? Did something distract you or cause you to overlook or ignore that item on the list? What should you change about what’s on your list or how you conduct your analyses or how you draw your conclusions — the process behind the decision to invest — to ensure that mistake won’t happen again? That’s system mindset.
