In the last posting we outlined the importance of experience and productive feedback in helping turn gut instincts into effective decisions. Here are two other tips to help you decide when to trust your gut and when to safeguard against over-reliance on instinct.
Measure your emotions
Some memories, obviously, come with more intense emotions than others, and these highly charged memories can often cloud judgment. Knowing, for instance, that dogs can bite is completely different from having a traumatic experience attached to an attacking dog. The first scenario can help you interact with dogs, while the second can make you terrified of all dogs, no matter how friendly a certain one may be. A McKinsey Company report provides an example of an unnamed corporate board chairman who lost a substantial amount of money after being with a previous company that did business in Russia. Because of this financial trauma, the chairman was extremely leery of a proposal that called for his new company to undertake a massive Russian expansion. He was able to separate his emotion from his decision-making process, however, after realizing his bias could be clouding his judgment. Therefore, he shared his trepidation but asked the remainder of the board to make the final determination.
Take your personal preferences out of the equation
It is very easy to let inappropriate attachments or interests influence decision-making. For example, when deciding between two different office locations, an executive might choose the one closer to his or her home. The subconscious normally gravitates to the more convenient option. Many times, board members with personal interests involving a certain decision will be asked to excuse themselves from a meeting – or to at least refrain from voting on that particular matter – for just this reason.
If you honestly appraise your decision-making processes you may find that you violate either these two tenets or the two mentioned in Part I of this posting. If that is the case, and poor decisions are the result, then you need to strengthen that process. This can typically be done through either allowing more dialogue and challenges to your decisions, to rely on objective data more than personal experience, and stronger governance or balance of power.
It can be very expensive to set up a true method of governance such as a corporate board, so it is usually more feasible to safeguard against over-reliance on gut instinct by the means of experience and data. For example, a McKinsey Company report points to Jack Welch, who in the 1990s knew he did not have a complete understanding of, or appreciation for, the Internet, and how it would help shape the future of General Electric. He knew he didn’t have the depth of knowledge necessary to tackle this critical issue so he decided to hire a personal Internet advisor 25 years his junior, and asked other top managers to do the same.
As with most issues we encounter, both in business and the other aspects of life, there are no universal answers. You can use objective data to challenge an assumption. But if you have an overpowering emotional attachment to one side of a decision or another, that data will basically be useless – even if it could be used to steer you toward a better choice. Again, we would never advise anyone to ignore their instincts, but we all need to do a better job of safeguarding against the possibility of those instincts leading us in the wrong direction.
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