Date: 2025-06-19
Theme: Decision Making
"If your choices are beautiful, so too will you be" - Epictetus
I was trying to understand if a recent project of ours was truly successful. At first glance, everything checked out - we delivered what we set out to. But I challenged myself and the team to look deeper: how did we get there?
In a world that prioritizes results, it’s easy to stop at the outcome. But what about the work behind the outcome? What about how we treated each other, how we communicated, how we made decisions?
A successful project is just the interface. The real story is the path that led to it. I have to remind myself and others that how we got there matters just as much, if not more.
We tend to recognize and celebrate results quickly. But sometimes, the road to those results is messy, rushed, or misaligned with our values.
How do we avoid rushing to judgment based solely on success?
How do we stay committed to making our choices “beautiful”, not just effective?
This quote from Epictetus reminds me that outcomes are only part of the story. What shapes us more deeply are the decisions we make on the way. How we choose to work, not just what we produce.
- Other people's choices during the journey
- How others perceive the final result
- Building predictable systems that support thoughtful decision-making
- Encouraging a culture of reflection, not just celebration
- Reviewing the how, not just the what, in retrospectives
Weekly rituals:
- Add “How did we get there?” as a prompt in retrospectives
- During weekly syncs, ask: “Would we be proud of our approach even if the result had failed?”
- Review at least one decision path, not just the final outcome
Cultural reinforcement:
- Praise thoughtful processes, not just delivery speed
- Encourage engineers to write project debriefs even for successful projects
This mindset shift helps create a healthier team culture. We’re starting to see success not just as a green checkmark, but as something earned through deliberate, principled action.
It also brings more clarity to my role as a manager: not just enabling outcomes, but designing the environment and systems that lead to good outcomes - outcomes we’re proud of.
And when things go well, we no longer say “we got lucky.” We say, “we did it right.”