The Hidden Traps in Decision Making

Making decisions is one of the most important things we do in our daily living.  It is also the toughest and riskiest in some situations.  Bad decisions can damage your career, business and finances, 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.

Psychological traps

There are a number of well-documented psychological traps that are particularly likely to undermine decision making.  These include:

• heuristics#, 
• biases and 
• other irrational anomalies in our thinking.  

Your best defense is AWARENESS

There are specific ways you can guard against them.  However, the best defense is always awareness.  

By familiarizing yourself with these traps and the diverse forms they take, you will be better able to ensure that the decisions you make are sound and that the recommendations proposed by others (your subordinates or associates) are reliable.

Additional notes:

#heuristics:  

These are unconscious routines we use to cope with the complexity inherent in most decisions.  These routines serve us well in most situations.  These simple mental shortcuts help us to make the continuous stream of judgments required to navigate the world.  But, not all heuristics are foolproof.  The resulting decisions often pose few dangers for most of us, and can be safely ignore.  At times, the decisions arising from these heuristics can be catastrophic.  What make all these traps so dangerous is their invisibility.  Because they are hardwired into our thinking process, we fail to recognize them - even as we fall right into them.