In making decisions, you may be at the mercy of your mind's strange workings. Here's how to catch thinking traps before they become judgment disasters.

Before deciding on a course of action, prudent managers evaluate the situation confronting them. Unfortunately, some managers are cautious to a fault - taking costly steps to defend against unlikely outcomes. Others are overconfident - underestimating the range of potential outcomes. And still others are highly impressionable - allowing memorable events in the past to dictate their view of what might be possible now.

These are just three of the well-documented psychological traps that afflict most managers at some point, assert authors John S. Hammond, Ralph L. Keeney, and Howard Raiffa. Still more pitfalls distort reasoning ability or cater to our own biases. Examples of the latter include the tendencies to stick with the status quo, to look for evidence confirming one's preferences, and to throw good money after bad because it's hard to admit making a mistake.

Techniques exist to overcome each one of these problems. For instance, since the way a problem is posed can influence how you think about it, try to reframe the question in various ways and ask yourself how your thinking might change for each version. Even if we can't eradicate the distortions ingrained in the way our minds work, we can build tests like this into our decision-making processes to improve the quality of the choices we make.

Making decisions is the most important job of any executive. It's also the toughest and the riskiest. Bad decisions can damage a business and a career, sometimes irreparably. So where do bad decisions come from? In many cases, they can be traced back to the way the decisions were made - the alternatives were not clearly defined, the right information was not collected, the costs and benefits were not accurately weighed. But sometimes the fault lies not in the decision-making process but rather in the mind of the decision maker. The way the human brain works can sabotage our decisions.

Researchers have been studying the way our minds function in making decisions for half a century. This research, in the laboratory and in the field, has revealed that we use unconscious routines to cope with the complexity inherent in most situations.

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Reprinted from Harvard Business Review

Note from Kevin

Greetings!

I want to welcome you to the first installment of a monthly newsletter designed to provide you with the cutting edge of leadership and management information. Each month we will provide you with an article from various sources that we believe is critical to separating you from your competitors. It is LeadersWay philosophy that learning and awareness are the keys to success, which is the primary reason we are providing you with this monthly resource. Read and share the information with all who will benefit, and never hesitate to drop me a line to discuss how we can help you ACT on what you have learned!

Issue #1 is critical and is likely one of the most important lessons leaders must learn in order to raise the quality of their decisions. Pay particular attention to the implication that these "hidden traps of decision making" occur without our knowledge. The payoff is raising your awareness about how your decisions can be and often are compromised by factors you don't see. When it comes to separating yourself from your competitors, every decision is important, so paying close attention to each of the 6 "hidden traps" will prove highly important. One last request: don't fall prey to the illusion that it doesn't happen to you. It happens to the best. The difference between the best and the rest is that the best are open to learning how they can become better! In the end, better decisions mean better results.

Life is good!

KW

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