Your job performance IS your decision-making performance

Date: November 17, 2025

Takeaways: Strip away job titles, responsibilities, and metrics. What's left? Decisions. You get paid to make decisions. You fail when decisions are bad. You succeed when they're good. If you want to understand your job, stop thinking about tasks and start thinking about decisions.

Table of Contents

• What Your Job Actually Is

• The Engineer Who Codes vs. The Engineer Who Decides

• Every Role Reduces to Decisions

• Why This Changes How You See Your Job

• The Decision Quality Problem

• Bad Decisions Look Like Bad Performance

• You Can't Separate Job Quality From Decision Quality

• Frequently Asked Questions

What Your Job Actually Is

You have a job description. It lists responsibilities, goals, and competencies.

It says things like:

• "Manage a team of 5"

• "Write clean, scalable code"

• "Close $2M in pipeline"

• "Deliver projects on time"

• "Own customer success"

But none of that is actually what you do.

What you actually do is make decisions.

Every single day, your job is deciding.

• Engineers decide: How should we architect this? What's the trade-off between speed and scale? Should we refactor or build new?

• Managers decide: Who should own this project? Should we hire? Should we fire? How do we solve this team conflict?

• Sales people decide: Which opportunities to pursue? How hard to negotiate? When to walk away from a deal?

• Product managers decide: What to build? What to prioritize? What to deprioritize? Should we pivot or persist?

• Operators decide: Which process to fix? How much to invest in it? Who should own it?

The job description lists the domain. But the actual work is decisions within that domain.

You're not paid to code. You're paid to make good coding decisions.

You're not paid to manage. You're paid to make good management decisions.

You're not paid to sell. You're paid to make good selling decisions.

The Engineer Who Codes vs. The Engineer Who Decides

Let's look at two engineers.

Engineer A codes all day. They write features. They ship code. They complete tasks.

Engineer B codes, but they decide how to code. They think about architecture before building. They evaluate trade-offs. They propose solutions before implementing. They review approaches with others.

Who's better at their job?

Probably Engineer B.

Why? Because Engineer B is making good decisions about how to code, not just that to code.

Engineer A cranks out code that works. Engineer B cranks out code that works AND scales AND is maintainable AND considers the future.

Engineer A makes decent decisions. Engineer B makes better decisions.

The difference isn't technical skill. It's decision quality.

Every Role Reduces to Decisions

Think about your role. What do you actually spend time on?

Product Manager:

• Decide what to build (or not build)

• Decide how to prioritize

• Decide when to pivot vs. persist

• Decide what metrics matter

• Decide how to trade off features

Sales Rep:

• Decide which prospects to pursue

• Decide how much to discount

• Decide whether to walk away

• Decide how to negotiate

• Decide what's realistic to close

Operator:

• Decide which process to fix first

• Decide how much to invest in automation

• Decide who owns the process

• Decide how to measure success

• Decide when to revisit it

Manager:

• Decide who to hire

• Decide who to promote

• Decide how to structure the team

• Decide which projects get resources

• Decide how to handle conflict

Executive:

• Decide company direction

• Decide which markets to enter

• Decide how to allocate capital

• Decide organizational structure

• Decide who to hire/fire

Strip away the jargon and you're left with: decisions.

Your job is a series of decisions you make every day.

Why This Changes How You See Your Job

Most people think about their job like this:

"I need to deliver X. I need to hit Y metric. I need to complete Z tasks."

That's the output-focused view.

But here's a better way to think about it:

"I need to make good decisions about X. I need to make good decisions about Y. I need to make good decisions about Z."

Why does this matter?

Because if you're focused on output, you might grind and achieve it through luck, effort, or circumstance that wasn't really your doing.

But if you're focused on decision quality, you own it.

A project ships on time. (Output)

That could be luck, good team, low complexity, or it could be good decisions about scope, timeline, resourcing, and risk.

Decisions were made well. (Quality)

That's you. That's repeatable.

The Decision Quality Problem

Here's the problem: Almost nobody explicitly tracks whether they're making good decisions.

They track outputs:

• "Did I ship?"

• "Did I hit revenue?"

• "Did I launch on time?"

But they don't track what influenced those outputs.

Was the output good because the decisions were good? Or because other factors aligned?

You don't know.

So you can't tell if you're actually improving at your job or just getting lucky.

If you can't see your decision quality, you can't improve it.

Bad Decisions Look Like Bad Performance

Here's what happens:

• You make bad decisions. They compound. The output suffers.

• Then your performance looks bad.

• But you might not understand why. You think: "I worked hard. I did everything right. Why didn't it work?"

• Maybe you did work hard. But the decisions were bad.

Example 1: The Engineer

Bad decision: "Let's build this without considering scalability."

Result: Code ships. Looks good initially. Then load increases. Code breaks. You spend months refactoring.

Performance looks bad. "This engineer can't handle growth."

But the real problem: bad decision about architecture upfront.

Example 2: The Sales Rep

Bad decision: "I'll chase every opportunity regardless of fit."

Result: Time spent on low-probability deals. Close rate tanks. Pipeline looks bad.

Performance looks bad. "This rep isn't closing."

But the real problem: bad decision about which opportunities to pursue.

Example 3: The Manager

Bad decision: "I'll delay hiring because budget is tight."

Result: Team gets burnt out. People leave. Team morale tanks. Productivity plummets.

Performance looks bad. "This manager can't scale a team."

But the real problem: bad decision about when to invest in headcount.

You Can't Separate Job Quality From Decision Quality

Here's the uncomfortable truth:

You cannot be good at your job and bad at decisions.

They're the same thing.

If your decisions are bad, your job performance is bad. It might take time to show up, but it will.

If your decisions are good, your job performance is good. Not guaranteed to be perfect (circumstances matter), but your job performance reflects it.

The best people at any role are the best decision-makers in that role.

Not the hardest workers. Not the most talented. The best decision-makers.

They make fewer mistakes because they decide better upfront. They course-correct faster because they're aware of decision quality. They build leverage because their decisions compound.

The worst people at any role are often the worst decision-makers.

Not because they lack ability, but because their decisions consistently miss.

Why Promotions Go to Decision-Makers

When organizations promote someone, what are they really promoting?

They're promoting a track record of good decisions.

"This person has made good decisions consistently. We trust them to make good decisions at a higher level."

The person who codes well gets promoted to architect because they make good technical decisions.

The rep who closes deals gets promoted to sales manager because they made good prospect and negotiation decisions.

The manager who scales teams gets promoted to director because they made good hiring and structure decisions.

Each level is a promotion of decision-making ability.

If you don't have a visible track record of good decisions, you won't get promoted.

Because how will they know you make good decisions?

The Alternative: You're Not Thinking About This

If you're not thinking about your job as decision-making, here's what happens:

• You think about metrics. Did I hit them? Good performance.

• You think about effort. Did I work hard? Good performance.

• You think about tasks. Did I complete them? Good performance.

• But you don't think about: Were those decisions good?

• So you might hit metrics through bad decisions that got lucky.

• You might work hard on low-impact decisions.

• You might complete tasks that shouldn't have been completed.

And you don't improve because you're not tracking what matters: decision quality.

What This Means Practically

If you accept that your job is decision-making, here's what changes:

1. You Start Tracking Decisions

"What are the key decisions I make in my role?"

For an engineer: architectural decisions, prioritization decisions, design decisions.

For a manager: hiring decisions, project allocation decisions, conflict resolution decisions.

For a sales rep: prospect selection, negotiation decisions, follow-up decisions.

You start being explicit about them.

2. You Review Outcomes

"Did the decision work out?"

Six months later, did the architectural decision hold up?

Did the hire work out?

Did the prospect close?

You track whether your decisions led to good outcomes.

3. You Extract Learning

"Why did that decision work or not work?"

Was it a good decision that had bad luck? Or a bad decision that had good luck?

What would I do differently?

What would I do the same?

4. You Improve

After enough decisions, you notice patterns.

"I make better decisions when X. Worse decisions when Y."

"I'm overconfident in this area. I should get more input."

"I'm too cautious in that area. I should trust myself more."

You start improving decision-making by understanding your own patterns.

Why Almost Nobody Does This

Most people don't track decision quality because:

1. It's uncomfortable. Looking at your decisions means confronting that some were bad.

2. It's not rewarded explicitly. Organizations reward output, not decision-making.

3. It's hard to measure. Decision quality is fuzzy. Metrics are clear.

4. Nobody teaches it. You're taught to deliver. Not to decide well.

5. It requires reflection. Easier to just do the work and move on.

But organizations that do this — that hire for decision-making, that evaluate it, that promote based on it — move faster.

The Bottom Line

Your job performance is your decision-making performance.

You get paid to decide.

You succeed when decisions are good. You fail when they're bad.

If you want to be excellent at your job, stop thinking about output.

Start thinking about decisions.

Track them. Review them. Learn from them. Improve them.

That's how you actually get better at your job.

Because your job IS your decisions.

The best people in any organization are the best decision-makers. Everything else follows.