The Trouble with Knowing What You're Looking For

There are few things more reassuring than a good plan. The watch is set, the restaurant is booked, the itinerary is printed. At work, the new executive has been appointed, the board is satisfied and everyone is ready to get on with things. A plan gives uncertainty somewhere to hide. The difficulty begins when the world fails to follow it. The restaurant disappoints, the investment falters, or the executive who seemed perfect on paper proves less suited to the actual business of running the company. We tend to blame the choice. But sometimes the problem is more fundamental: we were asking the wrong question. One man who understood this was John Boyd, an American fighter pilot and military strategist. Known for his extraordinary ability in simulated aerial combat, Boyd later challenged conventional thinking about military strategy. His most enduring contribution was a deceptively simple framework: Observe, Orient, Decide, Act. The OODA loop, as it became known, describes how people respond to changing circumstances. Observe what is happening, interpret the information, decide what to do and act. Then observe again. The interesting part is not the sequence. It is what happens in the middle. ## The uncomfortable business of being wrong We like to think we make decisions by collecting information and weighing it rationally. In practice, what we notice is often influenced by what we already believe. A person convinced that a prestigious employer produces exceptional executives will notice the impressive projects on a candidate’s CV. They may pay less attention to the generous budget, established team and considerable resources that made those achievements possible. This is not stupidity. Experience gives us useful shortcuts, but it can also make us remarkably efficient at confirming our own assumptions. Boyd understood that orientation — how we interpret what we observe — is central to decision-making. Two people can see the same facts and reach different conclusions because they bring different experiences and expectations to them. The useful question, therefore, is not simply whether we have enough evidence to support a decision. It is what evidence might persuade us that we are wrong. ## The CV and the person Consider a company searching for a transformation executive. The brief calls for experience in the same industry, at a comparable organisation, with a similar reporting structure. Understandable enough. Hiring is risky, and familiar experience offers reassurance. But a CV describes a career, not the circumstances in which it unfolded. It may not reveal how much of a result belonged to the individual, whether success depended on resources unavailable in the new organisation, or how the candidate behaves when authority is unclear and colleagues disagree. Companies do not hire people to repeat their CVs. They hire them to change something. The better question is not simply who has done this job before, but who has solved the problem this job exists to solve. Sometimes the answer is the obvious candidate. Sometimes it is somebody whose career looks less conventional but whose experience is more relevant. The point is not to be unconventional for its own sake. It is to understand why a particular choice is right, rather than mistaking familiarity for proof. ## A small experiment in humility Before making an important decision, write down three things: what you know, what you believe and what you have yet to discover. In a hiring process, the distinction might look like this. **What we know:** The candidate has led a major transformation. **What we believe:** They can repeat that success in a smaller, less structured organisation. **What we need to discover:** How they respond when resources are limited and senior stakeholders disagree. That last question may be the most valuable one in the room. At Sercxi, this principle informs our IMPACT assessment framework, which examines how candidates integrate across organisations, what motivates them, how they reason under ambiguity, whether they accept accountability, how they defend their convictions and how they build trust. A separate diagnostic considers their durability under pressure. The purpose is not to turn human beings into numerical scores. It is to make important aspects of judgement visible, particularly those that a CV and a polished interview can leave unexplored. ## Persistence or stubbornness? Boyd’s loop offers another useful lesson: a decision is not the end of the process. It is an action that produces new information. Suppose the first ten candidates approached for a role reveal that the compensation is uncompetitive. The instinct might be to approach another fifty. A better response is to ask what those conversations have taught you. Perhaps the salary needs reconsidering. Perhaps the role offers responsibility without sufficient authority. Or perhaps the search is aimed at the wrong talent pool. Each explanation suggests a different next step. This is the difference between persistence and stubbornness. Persistence keeps the objective in view. Stubbornness keeps the original plan in view. The distinction matters well beyond recruitment. An investor who revisits a thesis when the facts change is doing something different from one who explains away every warning sign. A manager who changes course after listening to customers is not necessarily indecisive. Sometimes changing your mind is evidence that your thinking is working. ## A better question for Monday A well-made watch keeps time. A good coat keeps out the rain. A carefully drawn map helps you find your way. But a map is not the territory, and a plan is not the world in which it must operate. The more elaborate the plan, the more tempting it can be to trust it. We become attached to the work, the consensus and the identity we acquire by being the person who made it happen. The answer is not permanent uncertainty. It is to be decisive without becoming attached to the decision. Before your next important choice, try asking a question more useful than “Do we have enough information?” Ask instead: **“What would we expect to see if we were wrong?”** The answer may reveal an untested assumption, a missing perspective or a reason to reconsider. It may also confirm that the original decision is sound. Either way, the decision will have been examined rather than merely defended. The advantage is not the ability to predict everything that will happen. It is the willingness to recognise what has happened and respond intelligently. In business, as in life, the best decisions are not necessarily those we get right first time. They are those that give us the best chance of getting it right before it matters too much. --- *At Sercxi, our APEX Protocol and IMPACT assessment framework bring this principle to critical leadership appointments, combining structured executive search with continuous learning from the market and the people we meet.* [Explore the Sercxi methodology](/methodology)