Decision Making Traps

Over the years, I observed two traps teams fall into when making decisions.

Power Seeking

It’s very straightforward. The team makes decisions based on the opinions of whoever has the most power. It’s obvious this may not yield the best outcome, because the most powerful people may not be the most qualified to make a decision, alone. Sometimes teams fall into this pattern in the name of efficiency. It is true that decisive decision-making is important, but it has to be based on enough input. Those inputs often come from the team and the domain experts. It’s even worse when over time, a culture starts to grow where people don’t want to challenge the leader because they’re too afraid to do so.

Consensus Seeking

Consensus-seeking at a high level works well when the relationship or well-being of everyone is the most important, but it may not be the best for a team to achieve success. First, reaching a consensus is a very slow process. The larger the team is, the longer the process takes. A good decision needs to be correct, but it oftentimes also needs to be timely. Second, consensus often doesn’t generate the best outcome. This is because people’s preferences don’t necessarily align with the best interests of the larger team. For example, in a larger organization, people tend to push for their own agenda based on their personal interests. The consensus of the above will be the best for every party involved, but not the best for the organization. Consensus-seeking is often deceiving because it looks like people are collaborating. The difference is whether people’s goals are for the best of the team.

What should we do instead?

A simple principle is to be truth-seeking. The team should collaborate to identify what is true. The more truth brought to the table, the higher quality of the decision. In addition, the team should also identify the hypothesis the teams are making and identify ways to validate the hypothesis - this will grow the amount of truth the team possesses.

There is no easy answer when it comes to making the best decision, but it’s easy to avoid common traps, and instead steer the team to make truth-based decisions.