There Is No Correct Answer

In business, there are no correct answers. Nothing can be objectively the best response to a situation.

Founders deliberate way more than is required. Deliberation is important, but too much leads to paralysis analysis. No one - not a guru, mentor, employee, legend - no one knows what the perfect thing to do in a situation is. Trust your gut. Your answer is the best answer. Take action on it. If it doesn’t work well enough, take your next best response.

You will know about the correctness of your response only after. The world is too complex for you to map out all the second, third, fourth order consequences of your actions.

What you want to be is “Probably Approximately Correct”. What does that mean?

1. You want to be approximately correct. Get the closest you can in the least amount of time. Your first shot can be 80% correct - and that’s fine. As long as you are close to being correct as per your own heuristics.
2. You want to be approximately correct with a High probability. There’s a 5% chance you will be 99% correct, or there’s a 90% chance you can be 80% correct. Which of these do you choose?

Optimise not just for correctness, but assuredness of that correctness. You will get chances to improve the action and get closer to a “correct” answer. But you must first get an answer in place.

Let’s take an example. Many founders stress out about how to price their product. Rather, just set a Probably Approximately correct price. Start selling. Eventually, you will learn the right price with iterations. You will have chances to improve on it.

If you try to optimise for your best response, you will waste away your life waiting for the right way to act. But you will never actually find it. It is a fool’s game to chase perfection in the first shot. Take the shot, and perfect it.

The only wrong answer is ‘Indecision’ and ‘Inaction’. If you do nothing, you’re in the wrong by default. Everything else can be corrected with further attempts.