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The ten mistake drivers

What are the root-causes of poor decision-making or mistakes?

Any under performing organisation simply represents the sum total of all the accumulated sub-optimum decisions and mistakes that have been made by the various stakeholders in the past. if you can remove the causes of mistake making, you can go a long way to transform business performance.

Basically there are ten mistake drivers to look out for and eliminate:

1. Lack of facts or the existence of misinformation
2. Dominance of opinion or beliefs over the genuine facts
3. Having a preconception as to what a new problem is and how to solve it
4. Lack of time to carry out the decision properly
5. Distractions, pressure and the stress of the circumstances
6. Pressure from third party agendas that adversely impact the decision
7. Lack of the appropriate skills in appraisal, analysis, problem-solving, evaluation, decision-making and so on
8. Non aligned or misplaced values
9. Stressed thinking due to stressed people making the decisions or implementing them.
10. Stressed thinking where the executive already has a deep rooted anxiety about ambiguity and uncertainty to an extent where their personal decision-making process triggers a stress arousal.

Four main characteristics of stressed thinking

In particular when people are stressed (mistake drivers nine and ten) they can make decisions influenced by the four main characteristics of stressed thinking. These symptoms are:

1. The decision-maker takes an overly simplistic view of the problem
2. They then come up with a vague “broad brush” solution lacking in crucial detail as to how to accomplish it and what the exact impact is likely to be
3. This situation is compounded with a crass over-confidence in the correctness of their view and a consequent unwillingness to hear other ppeople's points of view
4. Disaster is finally precipitated by an impulse for immediate action

There are alternatives to these above four characteristics. Sometimes stressed decision-makers put themselves in denial about the situation or just freeze up altogether.

Whatever the impulsive reaction is, it is vital to coherent planning and competent executive action that the decision-making process is not impacted by stress. A genuine collaborative leadership style (as opposed to an authoritarian leadership style) and a sound planning structure are proven to reduce the stress response in decision-making and so greatly improve planning outcomes. 

If you want to learn more about how you can reduce stress in your organisational processes and how TBD can reduce mistakes and sub-optimumm decisions just calll Jeremy Old on 0845 0945 819 or email us about the ten mistake drivers