applied know how
When it comes to decision-making, not all voices are equal, and giving everyone an equal say can lead to unequal consequences.
Let me share a story … I had a colleague who was notorious for being against every major risky decision in our organisation. At board meetings he would ensure his negative opinion was duely recorded, and recalled his negative views should a decision fail for what ever reason… but no one ever raised his nay-saying for all the projects that were successful.… Read more
How you make decisions is a critical part of the make up of a new General Manager, in the sixth part of our series I’ll dicuss bias and how it limits our decision making.
General managers need to be aware of the biases that affect us all and so be vigilant in mitigating their impact – by such means as forming diverse teams, soliciting independent opinions, collecting wide-ranging data, reframing questions and assigning and rotating the role of playing “devil’s advocate”.… Read more
In the last two weeks we’ve looked at scary, wild, outrageous and threatening occurrences in the business environment and then categorised these using a TOWS analysis. The final step is selecting what to do.
Making a selection is fraught with risk, and doubt. The risk is illustrated by a 2019 CB Insights study of 311 Startups that showed that 42% of startups die because they work on products with no market need the opportunity lacked insight.… Read more
Some decisions are consequential and irreversible or nearly irreversible – one-way doors – and these decisions must be made methodically, carefully, slowly, with great deliberation and consultation. If you walk through and don’t like what you see on the other side, you can’t get back to where you were before.
But most decisions aren’t like that – they are changeable, reversible – they’re two-way doors.… Read more
I’m delighting in thinking about the background as to how intelligent people make stupid mistakes.
Yes, I have another course to develop content for… this time strategic thinking and in particular UN-strategic thinking of Brexit, of Nokia and of Boeing 737Max amongst others. All were avoidable disasters that weren’t avoided: why?
In reviewing the most spectacular failures three key factors result in the kind of expensive, embarrassing, late-stage collapse that is the hallmark of a these cases.… Read more