The One-Off Illusion

The One-Off Illusion and How Interconnected Decisions Become Sub-Optimal

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It’s Wednesday night. You’re tired, your spouse is exhausted, and the kids are getting hangry. You grab your phone, open your favorite food delivery app, and pull up your go-to comfort food restaurant. No judgment—everyone’s been there. Ordering something quick and satisfying will keep the peace, and honestly, you’re craving pulled pork and collards. Sure, it’s not the healthiest option, but it’s fine for tonight. Tomorrow, you’ll cook something healthier. It’s just a one-off decision, right?

The issue here isn’t the occasional indulgence but the assumption that this is a one-off event. Think back—or better yet, check your order history in the app. Is it really a one-off? Or is it part of a pattern that happens more often than you’d like to admit? This isn’t about critiquing food delivery apps or comfort food—it’s about understanding how we view these decisions. When we treat each order as isolated, we’re more likely to make choices that don’t align with our long-term health goals. But when we zoom out and look at the whole history, we might notice a pattern: 70-80% of the orders aren’t as healthy as we’d like, and they happen about once a week.

This same dynamic plays out in business. Whether it’s a routine decision like approving insurance applications or a high-stakes choice like setting a strategic direction, treating decisions as one-offs often leads to unintended consequences. The cumulative impact of these seemingly isolated choices can derail goals and lead to suboptimal outcomes. Recognizing the interconnected nature of decisions is critical to avoiding this pitfall.

The One-Off Illusion

The trolley problem offers a compelling metaphor for understanding this illusion. Imagine a runaway trolley heading toward one person on the track. You have the option to divert the trolley to one of four other tracks: three are empty, but one contains five people. If viewed as a one-off decision, you might act based on immediate probabilities—choosing the option with the least immediate harm. This isolated view of the problem focuses solely on the immediate scenario without considering cumulative patterns.  If this event is replicated, the likelihood of hitting the five increases.  By taking into the broader circumstances of the trolley problem  the expected value of leaving the trolley on the original tracks leads to the death of one person.  By switching the tracks, the expected value of the four other tracks is 1.25 deaths.  For every five iterations, one extra person dies.  

In business, while usually less perilous, decisions are often treated similarly. Leaders might prioritize short-term gains or problem-solving for immediate challenges without seeing the systemic effects of their choices. For example:

• A sales team gives a large discount to acquire a large client, only for other customers to learn about how much more they are paying for the software.  
• A product team repeatedly prioritizes new features over technical debt, resulting in short-term market wins but long-term scalability issues.

These scenarios demonstrate how the one-off illusion blinds decision-makers to the broader implications of their actions.

Why Interconnected Decisions Become Sub-Optimal

When decisions are interconnected, treating them as isolated actions leads to systemic inefficiencies. Several dynamics explain this:

1. Cumulative Bias: Individual decisions, made under localized pressures, compound over time. This creates a path dependency, where earlier choices constrain future options. For instance, consistently favoring cost-cutting measures can hollow out organizational capabilities, leaving the business ill-equipped for innovation.
2. Misalignment with Strategy: Decisions made in isolation may diverge from overarching goals. A marketing team’s choice to prioritize volume over targeting may conflict with a company’s broader aim of attracting high-value customers, diluting the brand’s impact.
3. Unanticipated Ripple Effects: Like diverting the trolley without full knowledge of where it will go, business decisions often have unintended consequences. Focusing on a single team’s needs might inadvertently burden others, as when prioritizing development timelines disrupts customer support readiness.
4. Short-Termism: The one-off mindset often emphasizes immediate wins over sustainable progress. Over time, this leads to mounting inefficiencies, such as technical debt, employee burnout, or misaligned resource allocation.

Recognizing the interconnected nature of decisions is essential to breaking free from the one-off illusion. Whether it’s ordering comfort food or making strategic business choices, treating each decision as isolated events blinds us to the patterns and cumulative impact of our actions. These seemingly small, independent choices can compound over time, creating systemic inefficiencies, misaligned priorities, and unintended ripple effects that undermine our goals.  By understanding the pitfalls of the one-off illusion and adopting a holistic view of decision-making, we can avoid the traps of short-termism, reduce inefficiencies, and create systems that drive sustainable success. Ultimately, the key to better outcomes lies in seeing each decision as part of an interconnected web—one that requires thoughtful, intentional action to achieve lasting impact.

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