Usually, when we are faced with an important decision, we tend to think that there is a good option and one or more bad options. If things don’t go well after making our decision, we may be inclined to think that we made the wrong choice and that selecting one of the other options would have been the right decision. However, in many situations, especially the more complex and challenging ones, there was no good decision available. In such situations, we may have been faced with several choices, none of which can be seen as good, and the best we can say is that the decision taken was the least bad of the available options. (And, of course, as it is said, hindsight is always 20/20.)
One example of what I have described above is the decision Israeli leaders needed to make concerning how to deal with Hamas following the October 7 massacres. Israel had several options from which to choose. One such option was to do nothing or very little and to merely continue as it had previously, with occasional attacks on Hamas military targets in Gaza. This option would have avoided the deaths of several hundred IDF soldiers and tens of thousands of Palestinians, as well as the harm to Israel’s international standing, that have resulted from the path Israel has taken. However, it was not a realistic option given the nation’s anger and trauma and the humiliation of its leaders brought on by the October 7 attacks. Israelis became intent on destroying Hamas, and a passive approach to them would never have been acceptable. This option also would have left Israel vulnerable to more attacks by Hamas and weakened Israeli deterrence vis-à-vis its other enemies, meaning that a far more robust response was inevitable.
A second option would have been to go after Hamas targets in Gaza, but more surgically than the full-blown siege Israel has pursued to date. This would have avoided many Palestinian and Israeli casualties and might have spared Israel some of the pummeling it has taken in public opinion around the world. While this approach would have left Hamas degraded to some extent, it also would likely have left Hamas as a viable military and political force in Gaza, meaning that Israelis would have considered such a decision to be a weak and unacceptable alternative.
Finally, the third option is the one which Israel chose to follow – a massive and sustained siege of Gaza aimed at the complete destruction of Hamas as a military and administrative entity. Predictably, the results of this choice have been an extraordinarily high death toll and humanitarian catastrophe for the residents of Gaza and the opprobrium of much of the world for Israel. While the onslaught has reportedly killed thousands of Hamas fighters and degraded Hamas’s capability as a militant organization, it cannot be said that Hamas has been destroyed, and it is unlikely that that goal will ever be fully realized. Exacerbating the situation, the pursuit of this option was not linked to any notion of how Gaza will be governed and rebuilt after hostilities have ended.
Interestingly, at the time of this writing, Israel faces another perilous decision following the provocative assassination of Hezbollah and Hamas leaders. That decision is whether to strike preemptively at Iran and its proxies before they strike at Israel or to wait defensively to see how Iran responds to those assassinations. While the former might provoke an all-out war and further damage Israel’s international standing, the latter could leave Israel militarily vulnerable. Here, again, it is impossible to say at this point that there is a good decision, as the future timelines for each option are unknown and each is fraught with risks.
Yet another recent decision that reflects the analysis described above is New York Governor Kathy Hochul’s decision to put an indefinite pause on the introduction of congestion pricing, which would have reduced traffic and pollution in Manhattan and funded $15 billion in improvements to mass transit in New York City. The plan had survived various court challenges and surmounted a number of political hurdles, and the equipment needed to run the program had already been purchased and installed. Yet, with only three weeks to go before the plan’s start, Gov. Hochul decided to shelve the program indefinitely. Although the governor stated that she made the decision due to economic considerations, the real reason was the fear that the program might cost Democrats some House seats in districts where the plan was unpopular.
The Governor’s decision was not an easy one. She could have let congestion pricing take effect and risked the loss of some important House seats or she could shelve the program and alienate voters who care about traffic problems, the environment, climate change, and improving mass transit in the city. Gov. Hochul clearly seemed to be between a rock and a hard place – either path available to her was fraught. Whether she made a good decision will depend on whether the Democrats win the ostensibly vulnerable House seats at issue and whether alternative funding for the mass transit improvements can be found. Given the circumstances, it will take a politically confident leader to move forward again with congestion pricing.
A third example of this sort of difficult decision-making was the decision as to when to reopen schools in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic. On the one hand, moving to online classes during the pandemic was detrimental to students’ academic performance and socialization. That decision exacted a heavy toll on learning and on the psychological well-being of students. Yet reopening the schools too quickly risked further spreading the virus, as students, teachers, and other school staff infected each other and as students brought the virus home with them, possibly infecting or even killing vulnerable family members. Because no one knew for sure how severe such increased infections might be, this was a tough decision, with teachers objecting to the infection risk that would result from reopening the schools, but with many parents wanting to get their kids back into the classroom and into a more normal life as soon as possible.
In this case, the only way we have to assess the decisions which jurisdictions took would be to compare the results of those decisions. Thus, we would need to compare the academic performance of students, their psychological well-being, and infection rates in jurisdictions where schools were reopened earlier with students’ academic performance, psychological well-being, and infection rates in those jurisdictions where schools were kept closed. Notably, unlike in the case of the other decisions described above, it is possible to compare the results of both options, since different jurisdictions took different approaches. (Of course, even if we had the relevant data, it might be impossible to reach an objective conclusion as to the right decision, because the weighing of academic performance and psychological well-being against health outcomes is an inherently subjective call that depends on the relative value placed on each of these priorities.) In contrast, no such comparison is possible in the case of the other decisions mentioned above, because they are “one-off” decisions that do not allow for an assessment of the outcomes of the different possible choices.
A different sort of decision was that by Kamala Harris in choosing her Vice-Presidential running mate. Here I would say that, of all the choices which received the most attention, there probably was no bad choice, at least based on the information on each of them that was available in the media leading up to the decision. All of the candidates are successful politicians who either hail from all-important swing states or are expected to poll well there. While there may have been a best choice among the candidates, in the absence of an ability to compare the alternative timelines which each choice would have generated, it is impossible to know which choice was indeed the best one. However, looking back on the circumstances surrounding her decision, I do not believe we can say that any of the candidates would have been a bad choice. Compare that situation to John McCain’s disastrous choice of Sarah Palin to be his running mate, which demonstrated shockingly bad judgment. (Of course, Palin was not completely without her strengths – she was an attractive, energetic, and up-and-coming female Republican political figure. However, any careful analysis of her political persona would have revealed her serious shortcomings and her inadequacy to serve as Vice-President.)
Several important points should be derived from the discussion above. One is the importance of being a bit more understanding when judging the decisions of leaders. As noted above, often there is no good or clearly best choice, just a raft of fraught options from which to choose. (This does not, of course, absolve leaders of their duty to do the hard work of seeking out all available information that is relevant to the decision and consulting with advisors.) Moreover, many unpredictable factors can arise to derail what might have been a good decision. Former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld distinguished between what he referred to as the “known unknowns” and the “unknown unknowns.” The former refer to circumstances or events which we know are relevant to the decision but which we do not know the value or magnitude of, while the latter refer to circumstances or events that will impact on the outcome of the decision, but which the decision-maker did not even realize existed or were relevant at the time the decision was made. In the case of the congestion pricing decision, that there would be court challenges and political hurdles to congestion pricing was known at the time of the original decision, even if their nature and outcome were unknown at the time, and they were thus “known unknowns.” In contrast, the emergence of tight congressional races as a factor was not known at first and could thus be considered an “unknown unknown.”
As should be clear, the act of making difficult decisions is inherently complex and laden with uncertainties. By acknowledging the intricacies involved and the factors that influence these choices, we can foster a more nuanced understanding of leadership and the challenges it entails. Whether in the realm of international conflict, public policy, or crisis management, the decisions leaders make are often shaped by a convergence of competing priorities, unpredictable variables, and the relentless pressure to act decisively. An appreciation of the complexity and difficulty inherent in the making of important decisions will enable us to assess decisions in a more realistic, fair, and appropriate manner.
