The Fact that you are Successful with a Decision, doesn’t always mean it is the Right One

The Olatunji Decision-Outcome Matrix (ODOM)

The Olatunji Decision-Outcome Matrix (ODOM) shows how a successful outcome can be based on a wrong decision and vice-versa

Have you ever been in an argument with someone and they told you: “I have been successful with my decision, therefore I am right”? This is often a compelling argument which is difficult to counter. However, it is not always correct, although it sometimes is.

As a manager and management theorist, this then begs the question in my mind: when do we know if a successful outcome is based on the right decision and when it is not? This is a significantly challenging question to answer. However, if we carefully scrutinise the process of decision-making, we can easily categorise it into two parts: a right decision and a wrong one. We can place these two on the y-axis of a graph. We can then look at outcomes and place them in two categories: the right outcome desired in taking an action and the wrong outcome which is undesirable at the point of taking a decision. If we place this on the x-axis and combine it with the aforementioned y-axis, we get a 2x2 Decison-Outcome matrix which I am naming after myself as the Olatunji Decision-Outcome Matrix (ODOM), we may call it ODOM for short.

ODOM gives us four distinct possible outcomes; at the top left quadrant, we have the Right Decision/Wrong Outcome. In this scenario, you as an individual or institution might have taking the correct decision by most parameters, and still end-up with the wrong outcome. For example, a person married the spouse of their dreams, they are the quintessential perfect couple but 2 years into the marriage, their spouse dies suddenly without any known pre-existing health condition. In business, we can look at a company, called Kodak which initially invented the digital camera in 1975 but refused to bring it to market because it did not want to lose its traditional film and photography processing chemical market worth billions of dollars. On the face of it, this looks rational as the right decision but by the early 2000s, camera phones had become mainstream almost obliterating the photographic film and chemical market overnight. By 2012, the company filed for bankruptcy. The right decision led to the wrong outcome.

Moving to the bottom left quadrant, we have the Wrong Decision/Wrong Outcome. In this scenario, the decision-making process is flawed and the outcome of that decision comes out wrong. You could call this poetic justice if you like; you experience the consequence of your action. We often see campaigns that tell people not to drink and drive. Regardless of your position on drinking alcohol, I think we can all agree that drinking alcohol when you want to drive is the wrong decision. Where this leads to the drunk driver crashing their car and losing their life, we see that the outcome is wrong. So, we have a wrong decision, leading to the wrong outcome. In business, a classic example, is Blockbuster’s decision not to buy Netflix when it was presented to them by Netflix’s founders. Blockbuster was a video-rental company with over 9.000 stores globally. In 2000, they got the offer to buy Netflix which was at the time an unprofitable subscribe online and deliver by mail business for $50 million. The rejection by Blockbuster led to Netflix looking inwardly and eventually figuring out the online streaming model. Blockbuster filed for bankruptcy in 2010. What Blockbuster failed to see was that Netflix had figured out to a greater degree how to sell movies online which was a capacity they did not have expertise in. Ultimately, their wrong decision not to buy Netflix led to the wrong outcome of going bankrupt, just a decade later.

At the bottom right of ODOM, we have a situation where you take the Wrong Decision/Right Outcome. You might wonder if this is possible but it happens, you might call it a lucky break. Chess players might easily relate with this; you make an error that your opponent misses and fails to punish you for and by the next move, you have a decisive game-winning edge. A story that perfectly explains my point is that of Daniel “The Bull” Amokachi, the former Nigerian and Everton striker. On April, 9, 1995. Everton were playing an FA Cup semi-final match against Tottenham Hotspur, they were leading 2-1 but were under pressure from their opponents. The Everton manager at the time was Joe Royle, he instructed Amokachi to start his warm-up on the sidelines when the on-field striker, Paul Rideout had a knee injury. He was receiving treatment with Royle waiting to see if he could return to play for at least 5 minutes before the substitution would be made. However, Amokachi without Royle’s knowledge told the match officials that it was time for him to go in as a substitute for Rideout.

By the time Royle realised what had happened Amokachi was already on the pitch and could not be removed, he then went on to score 2 late goals to seal a famous 4-1 victory over Spurs and take them into the final which they played against Manchester United and won 1-0 thanks to a goal scored by Paul Rideout. Daniel Amokachi’s decision was the wrong one from almost every perspective you can think of at the time he made it, but it got his team a victory and secured him legendary status in England and the rest of the world. Joe Royle put this in context when he said of Amokachi’s antics: “The greatest substitution, I never made.”

In business, we can cite the case of Google and how it got its name. Google was supposed to be called Googol which stands for 1 followed by 100 zeros but the person instructed to search for the availability of the domain misspelt it as “Google”. Larry Page who with Sergey Brin co-founded the company liked it so much that he had the domain registered. The decision by the team member not to spellcheck properly led to one of the iconic brands, if not the most iconic brands in history and today, “google” is a formal English word with a dictionary entry meaning to search for information on the internet using a search engine. So, the wrong decision can sometimes lead to incredibly right or if you like positive outcomes.

At top right quadrant, we have the Right Decision/Right Outcome. Many of us would know Straight A students that have been exceedingly brilliant and dedicated to their studies during childhood and we would have seen their upward trajectory of getting exceptional results in school, business and life generally. Some of them might be so bright that they jettison institutions of higher learning. They are called overachievers, outliers and so on. In business, individuals like Steve Jobs and Elon Musk come to mind. They have radically different views about solving problems and seek to fundamentally understand and surmount the challenges they face. For example, After Elon Musk took control of Tesla which makes electric cars, he did not have their designs patented. In 2014, he wrote a blog post: "All Our Patent Are Belong To You." He made them available and the strategy behind it is that he wanted to build a global ecosystem of innovation around electric vehicles and supporting infrastructure that would make cars running on internal combustion engines and hybrids less-desirable in the long term. If Tesla alone was the one being innovative, its reach and impact would be limited. But if 1000s of companies around the world including those in China with the largest population in the world of over 1.4 billion people, the rate of adoption and advancement would be greater. His strategy has worked and the outcome is that electric car sales are growing exponentially around the world, even in developing countries like Nigeria. As I write, Tesla’s market capitalisation is over $1 Trillion; an exceedingly right outcome for any decision.

Steve Jobs similarly had a strong impact based on his decision to jettison keyboards and styluses on smartphones when Apple launched the iPhone in 2007. The smartphone market was dominated by Nokia and BlackBerry back then and this new approach to using a smartphone with just your fingers tapping a touch screen was primarily Steve Jobs’ idea and he diverted resources to it. Almost 20 years after, the iPhone is still the most sought after mobile phone in the world. Over 3 billion iPhones had been sold as at mid-2025 and the brand keeps going strong.

In these scenarios, the right decisions, led to the right outcomes and we can say that this is the ideal outcome in the decision-making process. By using ODOM as a framework for evaluating the quality of decision-making in a relation to right outcomes (success) we can differentiate between luck, bad luck, bad decisions leading to bad outcomes and good decisions leading to good outcomes. The more we focus on and iterate good decision-making processes that lead to the right outcomes we desire, the more we have the chance to create exponential growth in whatever activity we set our mind and resources to.

If you would like training on this and other strategic ideas and skills to improve your decision-making and outcomes, please contact me via WhatsApp on 08085404500 or send an email to [email protected]