ByMyReckoning

There's a common phrase used nowadays to describe decisions which appear trivial or petty. They are described as “no brainers”. Its most recent public appearance was courtesy of Dick Cheney when he used it to imply that the use of “a dunk in water” on terrorist suspects was legitimate practice.

Without wanting to sound pedantic, there really is no such thing as a “no brainer”. Our brains are always at work and it's in situations in which we are confronted with important decisions that appear be 'no brainers', that we sometimes ought to be most careful.

This is of real interest to managers in the midst of planning exercises or in fact anyone confronted with an important decision.

How often during our day to day activities do we allow for the fact that the normal workings of the human mind can occasionally sabotage the decision making process.

The decision making process can be hijacked by a variety of perceptual distortions (phenomena ranging from) including simple bias, anchors, heuristics, the overconfidence trap, the prudence trap, recallability, status quo, sunk cost and confirmation.

Overconfidence: A tendency to have to great a belief in the accuracy of our own judgment. This is often the result of an underling tendency to recall successes rather then failures.

Prudence: Some people or organisational cultures may be risk averse casing them to miss valuable opportunities.

Recallability: Unusual results or occurrences of an event may be given more significant than they really deserve.

Heuristics: Templates or "Rules of thumb" for making decisions that we apply unconsciously to avoid getting bogged down in the complex minutia of everyday life. They are indeed generally useful, but on occasion they can cause mistakes and we are very bad at making adjustments and learning from the errors they cause.

Bias: Basic irrationalities in ones thought process.

Anchors: Its true first impressions do count. In this case we must combat the fact that humans are wired to unconsciously attach too much significance to the first information received.

Confirmation: Unconsciously seeking information that confirms or supports one's current viewpoint or position. We all have a tendency to consult colleagues who share our opinions.

Status Quo: Favouring courses of action that maintain the current situation or structure. This might take the form of a over reliance on old or established solutions to new problems/situations without making a fresh assessment of the situation.

Framing: It's important to ask the right questions. Questions must be structured in such manner that they do not lead respondents in a particular direction.

Sunk cost: This manifests as a tendency to make decision that justify previous bad decisions and is often apparent in situations where “good money after bad” is poured into a failing project when the rational choice would be to bring the project to a halt.

How often during our normal day-to-day activities do we allow for the fact that the normal workings of the human mind can occasionally sabotage the decision making process?

Techniques that will help avoid these traps;

• 1. Raising individual and organisational awareness is always the starting point for combating these weaknesses.
• 2. Training and education can help to alleviate some of the effects of these problems.
• 3. Testing of hypotheses and assumptions should help to identify biases or oversights.
• 4. Teamwork and the elicitation of opinions from colleagues may help counter bias and qualified.
• 5. A structured and rigorous approach to problem solving will help ensure that errors are minimised.

These limitations will become more important as modern life becomes ever more complex, the number and intricacy of decisions we are required to make increases as we become further removed from the environment for which we were 'designed'. Perhaps some of our leaders would do well to remember that.

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