Make Sound Decisions Repeatedly
A survey of top executives showed that executives only make “sound decisions” 52% of the time.
That’s only 2% better than flipping a coin. So if you could improve just a few percent, you could be
in an elite class of decision-makers who make sound decisions repeatedly.
Why is it only 2% better than flipping a coin? There are three reasons:
1. Their extensive industry knowledge and expertise.
2. Their reliance on analysis and critical thinking
3. Their self-limiting perspective.
Industry expertise can hurt your ability to make sound decisions.
In becoming a decision-maker, you have accumulated extensive knowledge and experience in your industry, market, products, and services.
You have talked to many customers. You know how what works and what doesn’t work.
You have established patterns, processes, and a culture of how “we do it here.”
While all of this is necessary, it has also established automatic thought patterns, which you can refer to quickly.
And at the same time, it limits your ability to think outside of your industry and market
to understand how other markets and industries might think about and handle the problem or opportunity.
So they decide based on the past rather than exploring new ways to think about the problem or opportunity.
Hearing about how a different market does something often gives them ideas on
how they might use this idea or process to solve a problem or improve their strategy, product, or service.
All this built-in knowledge and experience keeps them from repeatedly making sound decisions.
Over-reliance on analysis prevents making sound decisions.
We learned that gathering enough information and analyzing the data thoroughly
was the “the way” to solve problems and create a better way forward.
Unfortunately, making data-driven decisions often does not work because analyzing the data is all about the past, not the future.
So, if you need to move forward into the future, all those old solutions and ideas will not work.
Here’s an article from Forbes if you want another view.
Critical thinking is a good process and should be used,
but the object of critical thinking is to judge whether the information you have is correct or not, true or not.
That is undoubtedly important to understand the problem or opportunity,
but it will not help you look into the future to solve this new problem or exploit this unique opportunity.
The goal, of course, is to make sound decisions repeatedly.
Here is a traditional view of critical thinking from the Critical Thinking Organization.
Limited perception inhibits making sound decisions.
The first and maybe the most important thing you need is to see the problem or opportunity.
In other words, your perception. It is your perception that will design a solution.
One of the best ways to explain this is with an example. Here is one from Edward de Bono.
A group of 12-year-old boys was always picking on Bobby, one of the boys.
Because that is what they do at that age, one day, they showed Bobby two coins,
a larger one worth one dollar and a smaller one worth two dollars, and they told Bobby
he could pick one of the coins and keep it.
Bobby picked the larger coin, and the other boys laughed and talked about how dumb Bobby was.
They made this offer whenever they wanted a good laugh at Bobby’s expense.
One day an older man saw what they were doing and told Bobby that the smaller coin was worth twice as much as, the larger coin.
Bobby said he knew that. But if he took the two-dollar coin, they wouldn’t keep returning and giving him additional coins.
Conclusion
Expertise and analysis are essential, but you must look forward rather than just backward
and broaden your perception if you want to move forward.
So, your perception of the situation is often not considered and is critical to your decision.
That is how you will make sound decisions repeatedly.
You will want to check out our blog post, “How To Get Significantly Better Results In Less Time.”
Also, check out our website, How To Create Strategies That Turn Goals Into Results.
