Every business leader’s career is a story of paths taken and paths not taken. The landscape is littered with the ghosts of “what if” scenarios. “What if we had acquired that competitor when we had the chance?” “What if we had launched that product a year earlier?” “What if we had never entered that market that ended up being a drain on our resources?” It is natural to look back and wonder, but dwelling on these questions can lead to regret, a typically unproductive emotion that drains energy from the present.
The fundamental truth is that the outcome of the untaken path is unknowable. We try to convince ourselves that we know how things would have turned out, but we are basing this on a fantasy constructed with the benefit of hindsight. We cannot rerun life’s experiments with different variables. Focusing on “what might have been” is a futile exercise in comparing a messy, complex reality with an idealized, imaginary alternative.
An old Chinese parable tells of a farmer whose horse runs away. His neighbors say, “What bad luck.” The farmer replies, “Good luck, bad luck. Who knows?” The horse returns with wild horses, and the neighbors celebrate his good luck. Then his son breaks his leg taming one, and they lament his bad luck. Soon after, the army arrives to conscript all the young men, but the son is spared because of his injury. The story illustrates that our perspective is never wide enough, nor our time horizon long enough, to truly judge whether a single event was “good” or “bad.”
The most constructive approach for a leader is to accept the choices made with the information available at the time, extract whatever lessons can be learned, and then fully recommit to the path you are on now. Mourning the unknowable is a tax on present focus and future execution. Let go, and move forward.
Freeing your team from the weight of past decisions is essential for focusing all your energy on the path you are on now. I help leadership teams process these “what if’s” and move forward, as an Executive Coach to manage the psychology of regret and as a Fractional CFO to build a compelling plan for the future that is. If your team is anchored by a past decision, let’s talk about how to set a new, forward-looking course.