Why good leaders make bad decisions

• Authors:: Andrew Campbell, Jo Whitehead, Sydney Finkelstein
• Decisions through pattern recognition and emotional tagging

  • Leaders make decisions largely through unconscious processes that neuroscientists call pattern recognition and emotional tagging. (Location 61)

    • We believe we make most of our decisions rationally, but that would most likely be too taxing on our System 2. Instead we have developed a quick and effective decision mechanism based that consists of recognizing certain patterns and associating them with emotion
      • Related to System 1 and Limbic System
    • Z: Consider the influence of emotional tagging in your decision making

  • But this emotion-driven pattern recognition system can be distorted by 3 red flags of emotional tagging
    • self-interest
      • biases the emotional importance we place on information, which makes it easier for us to see the patterns we want to see
    • emotional attachments
      • our judgement can be affected by our attachment to people, places, things, etc.
    • misleading memories
      • Related to experience bias

      • Nothing is more responsible for the good old days than a bad memory resonate, Enlightenment Now, Steven Pinker

      • Strong emotional attachment can mislead our memories even more
  • This is a powerful mechanism and can create strong connections between thoughts and emotions, to the point of making that connection hard to rewire

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      our brains leap to conclusions and are reluctant to consider alternatives. (Location 64)

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      we are particularly bad at revisiting our initial assessment of a situation—our initial frame. (Location 64)

• It is critical to find ways to systematically detect bias, and put safeguards to protect us from red flag conditions

  • get the help of an independent person to identify which decision makers are likely to be affected by self-interest, emotional attachments, or misleading memories. (Location 62)

  • Injecting fresh experience or analysis

    • You can often counteract biases by exposing the decision maker to new information and a different take on the problem. (Location 67)

  • Introducing further debate and challenge
  • Imposing stronger governance

    • Stronger governance does not eliminate distorted thinking, but it can prevent distortions from leading to a bad outcome. (Location 68)