If you are on social media at all, you have been presented with survey questions -- usually in the form of multiple choice. Sometimes the choice is "obvious". Sometimes one or more choices are unclear -- they could mean more than one thing. Sometimes you want another choice (sometimes they will say "other" and ask you to clarify in comments). But, what happens after you have made a choice?
Often, the "survey" will immediately return the current statistics with what percentage of people had which answer marked. Sometimes, they only tell you results after the deadline for participation has passed. Of course, there are those times when your survey (or suggestion in the suggestion box) goes into a black hole and is absorbed by the universe and you never find out who answered what.
But, let's say that you DO get the results back. You have picked the most popular choice. What do you say to yourself? Is it something like "of course it was that one, everyone should have picked that one -- it was obvious". What if you picked the least popular choice? Is your reaction a lot different? Is it more like "hmm, why did I choose that one, everyone else must have known something I didn't. I better investigate that choice and see what it really means." And, having a choice in the middle of popularity isn't so bad -- you neither puff up with pride nor do you try to find a rock to crawl under.
It isn't always so obvious. Most of us have encountered the phenomenon of "buyers remorse". Once upon a time, I wanted a new car. I researched and looked around and finally chose a car (which I loved until it was totaled in a car crash). I was mentoring someone, at work, at the time and they purchased a new car (a totally different model than what I eventually chose) about a month before I made my purchase. They saw, and rode in, my choice of car -- and went off to buy one for themselves, trading in their one month old car. That was a very expensive change of mind.
Buyers remorse can fall into a couple of variations. One is, as above, when you decide afterward that you should have chosen something else. Another is when you purchase something and it did not lead to ultimate bliss as you, or the salesperson, talked you into believing. You purchase a game that you ended up playing for a week and then never went back to. A glass that you used once and then put up on a shelf to never be used again. We have a very consumer-oriented economy and society, so most people are in the process of deciding what to buy -- and rarely in the process of deciding whether or not to buy.
Of course, making decisions is not always about things. Something that I have heard is that "a good executive makes decisions and a great executive makes good decisions -- eventually". A captain of a ship who cannot make a decision will eventually end up on the rocks. One who makes decisions, but not necessarily good ones, will keep moving around to avoid the rocks but the journey may be a rough one and the destination will continue to change. But the captain who makes a decision and, if it proves to be a poor choice, admits it and changes course as soon as it is prudent -- will get to a predetermined destination in an expedient fashion.
Note that that great executive has to do a series of things. They must make decisions. They must continuously evaluate the results. They must determine when there is enough evidence to say whether it was a good decision or a bad one. If good, full speed ahead. If bad, clean up from the mistakes (including possible apologies) and make the next best guess of a decision. No executive truly knows, for certain, that a decision is a good one (though, if not listening to others, they may make what appears to be an "obvious" bad one). It is what they do afterward that determines their quality.
