You never have all of the facts

People work hard to try to have “all of the facts” when making a decision, which is a wise thing to do. At some point, though, you need to realize that you can’t literally have all of the facts and you just need to make the best decision that you can.

I love this quote from Litton Industries founder Tex Thornton, from the book “ Becoming Trader Joe “:

If all the facts could be known, idiots could make the decisions.

If you could have absolutely every fact in your hand, decisions would be easy. The opposite is what makes truly great leaders — being able to predict the future where facts simply can’t exist to support their view.

Steve Jobs was a master at this. When he released the iMac in 1998, he chose not to include a floppy disk drive in it. We can see now that it was a good decision, but people at the time weren’t so sure.

• “That one glaring design mistake in the iMac is that Apple decided to build it without a floppy-disk drive” — Walt Mossberg in the Wall Street Journal
• “My guess is that Apple is wrong about home users-most will still want a floppy (or zip drive) and will have to buy an add-on.” — Charles Piller from the Los Angeles Times
• “If Steve Jobs is so damn smart, why did he approve the next great Apple disaster, the iMac? I…