Each day, intelligent leaders make mistakes, with devastating consequences.
Our daily decisions are generally small and innocuous. Others are incredibly important, affecting people’s lives and well-being.
Authors Sydney Finkelstein, Jo Whitehead and Andrew Campbell have studied how smart leaders make catastrophic decisions. In Think Again: Why Good Leaders Make Bad Decisions and How to Keep It From Happening to You (Harvard Business School Press, 2008), these experts show how the brain’s thinking processes can distort judgment.
Flaws of Decision Making
In studies of more than 83 flawed business and political decisions, the authors identify two major factors at play:
1. An individual or a group has made an error of judgment.
2. A decision process fails to correct the error.
Normally, when an influential person makes an error of judgment, the decision process will bring the error to light. Other people with different views will challenge the flawed thinking. The facts will be exposed and erroneous views corrected.