Every decision is a bet

Professional poker player Annie Duke explores how we can all become better decision-makers in an uncertain and challenging world. She helps us understand how to disentangle the role of luck and skill in determining outcomes, ultimately helping us make better bets that lead to better outcomes and a better life.

One of her suggestions is to do scenario planning.

Scenario planning can help us make better decisions and plans, anticipating how things may or may not work out and improving the quality of our plans along the way. There are two types of scenario planning:

1. Backcasting – If you backcast, you imagine that you’ve achieve your goal. Then you work backward to think about how you got there. This is a positive frame that helps you imagine the outcome you want. If you play golf like I do, you might find backcasting helpful. After finishing a hole, look back at the tee and reimagine how you would play the hole again and in how many strokes. Start with the end in mind and plan backwards.
2. Premortems – When you do a postmortem, you deduce why something, or someone died. When you do a premortem, you imagine a world in which you don’t achieve your goal – aka your plan failed. You then think about all of the reasons the plan might fail, and this helps you create a plan that reduces the probability of these things from happening. When you create your business model canvas, decide what is the one thing that will kill your company or stop your idea in its tracks.

Both backcasting and premortems are useful, but premortems are more effective in helping you get good outcomes, whether it be a successful startup or getting a non-clinical role or career transitioning.

In imagining a world in which you don’t succeed, you reduce the likelihood that your plans are overly optimistic, help tackle roadblocks in advance and feel better if you don’t succeed on your path.

Here is why your startup will fail.

Backcasting, testing your business ideas and doing a premortem can prevent it and cut several strokes off your score the next time you play your favorite course. Just don't think that chipping in from off the green on the 18th hole after a lousy round is necessarily due to your skill, because, truth be TOULD , you might just have been lucky.

Arlen Meyers, MD, MBA is the President and CEO of the Society of Physician Entrepreneurs on Substack