The Rule of 1000 Decisions (as a tie into myth-busters)

A couple 'prior-lives' ago, I worked with a CIO at a mid-sized bank who gave me quite a bit of encouragement and opportunity. There were several things I remember from working with him.

The first was his success criteria for the project to bring in the bank's website in-house. 'Just make it suck less'. I believe we did that in spades. The basic design was functional enough to last about five years before they out grew that architecture. Quite a feat for a site that was developed in 2001.

The second was his 'Rule of 1000 Decisions'. Essentially, this rule start with the premise that everyone makes mistakes and generally, everyone makes more good decisions than bad decisions. The caveat is that those who don't may not last long. Supposing that for every 1000 decisions you make, you have 900 good decisions, 50 bad decisions and 50 great decisions. If you start to avoid making decisions to avoid the bad ones, you are missing out on more good and great decisions that you could be making. The point is that you need to keep making decisions and accept the fallout as well as the praise for those decisions.

The tie into myth busters is this discussion on the importance of failures, even massive failures.