Of Biases and Limited Thinking: The Trouble With Decision Making
Komal manages a team of four supervisors, each of whom manages their own teams. She must decide whether to fire Rajiv, a subordinate, based on the following data shared by Kirti, a supervisor in her team, and Rajiv’s manager:
1. Rajiv has consistently failed to do what is required of him
2. Rajiv is intelligent and has demonstrated the ability to innovate and come up with economical solutions. But he rarely takes up such projects on his own initiative
3. Rajiv’s attitude, people say, is poor: they say that he is openly and bluntly critical of people and their ideas, and this has caused friction in the team many times
4. Team members dislike working with him
| Option |
Feedback |
| Tell her to fire Rajiv |
This is certainly an option. However, you could be losing a great resource if you choose this.
You could also have chosen to avoid firing him and worked with him to improve his conduct.
However, there’s no way to know if this going to work, or if it will ultimately prove to be a waste of time? Would a more systematic means of deciding help you? We feel so. And that is what subsequent lessons in this programme deal with. |
| Tell her to avoid firing Rajiv, but to work with him to improve |
This is certainly an option. However, there’s no way to know if this going to work, or if it will ultimately prove to be a waste of time?
You could have chosen to fire Rajiv too. However, you could have ended up losing a great resource.
Would a more systematic means of deciding help you? We feel so. And that is what subsequent lessons in this programme deal with. |
| Tell her you can’t decide. |
You could tell her this. However, she has sought your help.
Perhaps it would have helped you if you had been armed with a systematic means of arriving at complex decisions. And that is what subsequent lessons in this programme deal with |
The decision-making conundrum
We make decisions every day. While some day-to-day decisions are routine and straightforward, others are more complex, like in Komal’s case. Routine decisions are fine, and do not demand much of us, cognitively speaking. But difficult or challenging decisions demand more consideration.
The trouble with decision making
Individual characteristics, including personality and experience, are known to influence our decisions.
Take Komal’s case: her decision to fire or retain Rajiv could be influenced by the following:
- If she likes Rajiv, she would be inclined to retain him, and choose the opposite if she doesn’t
- If she is not strong willed and being put under pressure by co-workers covertly jealous of Rajiv, she could be arm-twisted into firing Rajiv
- If she is given to making decisions based on data as it is presented to her, without digging deeper into the validity of that data, they could make a faulty decision of firing Rajiv
- If she is given to binary, ‘either-or’ thinking, she would see only two options in front of her (retain or fire Rajiv). She could choose one and that could be a poor decision.
Komal’s decisions could be the product of biased sub-par thinking patterns. As such, biases, an inability to systematically consider options and giving in to binary either-or thinking are major obstacles in our decision-making process.
What is required is an objective and systematic means of of arriving at decisions. The remainder of this programme deals with such systems.
For now, please take the quiz provided at the end of this lesson before moving on.
