You Shouldn’t Trust Your Gut as a Decision Maker: Here’s Why The biggest falsehood in business leadership and career advice may also be the most repeated: “go with your gut.” Surely you heard this advice often, as well as some variations of that phrase, such as “trust your instincts,” “be authentic,” “listen to your heart,” or “follow your intuition” as a decision maker. If you enjoy video, here’s a videocast based on this blog: And if you like audio, here’s... Read more
When’s the last time you heard a colleague say something so ridiculous that it made your jaw drop? Such denial of reality happens surprising often. Perhaps it’s something political — like, George Bush is behind 9/11. Maybe they express science denial, insisting that the Earth is flat. Or is their delusion related to your business, something that makes you realize that they’re seeing the profit and loss statements through rose-colored glasses? Being in Denial is More Frequent Than You Think Your... Read more
The choice that feels most comfortable to your gut is often the worst decision for your bottom line. To be a truly wise decision maker, you have to adopt counterintuitive, uncomfortable, but highly profitable techniques to avoid business disasters by making the best decisions. That’s the key take-away message of this episode of the Wise Decision Maker Show, which describes the Wise Decision Maker Movement Manifesto. Videocast: “Wise Decision Maker Movement Manifesto” Podcast: “Wise Decision Maker Movement Manifesto” ... Read more
Guest Post By Brent N. Hunter Knowledge Management (KM) is the art and science of leveraging individual and collective knowledge for the benefit of all stakeholders. Psychology is the very foundation of KM because KM is all about people. To best understand how to leverage individual and collective knowledge, we must utilize a common definition of knowledge. According to the Knowledge Management Institute (KMI), knowledge is understanding gained through experience, either ones’ own direct experience or the experience of others.... Read more
Guest Post on Making Better Decisions By Mark Faust What is the process you should use for making better decisions? Agree first on the process of making the decision Who owns the decision Who are the stakeholders What is the objective What are the alternatives What are the risks How will we decide Making Better Decisions Faster Are there decisions you have put off that could potentially be of great benefit to the company? Do you sometimes feel like... Read more
Negotiators, even professional ones, make surprisingly many wrong decisions that doom negotiations that should have succeeded. Many of these mistakes relate to overestimating how well they can read the feelings and thoughts of other parties in the negotiation, as well as the extent to which the other party can read their feelings and thoughts. For instance, research shows that negotiators who sought to conceal their desires did a better job than they thought they did. In turn, those who tried... Read more
Isn’t it wonderful to have certainty, confidence, and clarity about what you’re going to do going forward? In the context of our increasingly disrupted, globalizing, and multicultural world, business leaders greatly appreciate the security and comfort of clear-cut strategic plans for the future. After all, following our in-the-moment intuitions frequently leads to business disasters, and strategic plans help prevent such problems. Tragically, popular business strategic analyses meant to address the weaknesses of human thinking through structures and planning are deeply... Read more
You probably heard the business advice of “failing to plan is planning to fail.” That phrase is a misleading myth at best and actively dangerous at worst. Making plans is important, but our gut reaction is to plan for the best-case outcomes, ignoring the high likelihood that things will go wrong. A much better phrase is “failing to plan for problems is planning to fail.” To address the very high likelihood that problems will crop up, you need to plan... Read more
True leaders at any level of the totem pole show their leadership primarily through emotional intelligence, knowing and managing their own emotions. After all, the only things we can control in life are our thoughts, feelings, and behaviors, and if we can manage those, we can lead our organizations from anywhere in the hierarchy. If we know about how our minds work, we can be intentional about influencing our own thinking and feeling patterns. We can evaluate reality more clearly,... Read more
Avoiding disastrous decisions and maximizing success through effective leadership decision making involves: 1) Deciding the decision criteria 2) Weighing the importance of criteria 3) Grading your options using the criteria 4) Checking with your head and gut 5) Sticking to your choice This is the key takeaway message of this episode of the Wise Decision Maker Show, which describes the technique for Avoiding Disastrous Decisions. Videocast: “Avoiding Disastrous Decisions via Effective Leadership Decision Making” Podcast: “Avoiding... Read more
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