How to stop making dumb decisions - the art of focus.

If you see yourself as an entrepreneur who's committed to becoming a better leader and wants to make better business decisions more often read on. Feel free to cut to the chase and check out my suggested actions at the end.

There's an undeniable truth. People are more successful if they make better decisions more often. Persistently successful people increase their odds of better outcomes by using optimal personal decision-making systems. I'm not talking about intellectual decision trees or off the shelf software. I'm talking about leveraging all of their innate capacity to innovate, analyses and commit to something they truly believe in. Critically, they take action.

Equip an entire organisation with the capacity to make wiser decisions more often and your competition disappears into your dust. Other people will wonder, "What's their secret?"

You're reading this article because you're running a business and want it to grow sustainably and build value. How often do you feel under pressure to make decisions before you're really ready, even though the consequences may be crucial to the business? Ask yourself, "Am I making decisions based on high- quality diverse information?" What's your gut telling you the moment before you decide?

The secret to success is to have a robust and reproducible personal decision process integrated with reliable external feedback and critique. We like to see ourselves as independent thinkers but we're constrained in our thinking by our interaction with the world and people who surround us. To restrict feedback to people just like us limits our ability to see opportunity and threat and react appropriately. We may be temporarily reassured but we're sadly ill-equipped to make adaptive decisions relevant to the new situation. Intentionally, surrounding ourselves with diverse thinking is the key. Undoubtedly our ego is challenged but so are our unfounded beliefs and assumptions. When we really listen to conflicting views we get to the essence of the issue and we begin to accept new ways of doing things. It's these new world views that disrupt your competition before they disrupt you.

The trouble with making decisions

There's no escaping it: Our decisions impact our future success

In the last couple of months, several of my clients have had to make decision fundamental to their future success. One of them, a high-potential start-up has been badly let down by a key manufacturer who provided product unserviceable quality jeopardising the business's existence. The owner's next decisions were crucial not only to the company's survival but their own personal financial future.

The second company a growing SME who just secured their first seven-figure contract. However, even before a single task is performed for the new client they must determine how their current company structure, systems and talent etc. are equipped to deliver the highest quality. Doing it by the skin of their teeth won't get them a second contract and won't prepare them for even bigger things.

Finally, I have a relationship with a range of investors whose principal concern is the success of the businesses they invest in. In other words, they're concerned with the "safety" of their investment and the likelihood of significant financial returns. They're more likely to invest in a business with clear, robust and adaptive decision-making processes.

How do we make poor decisions?

Some decisions are small and inconsequential whilst others change the course of world history. Some can be mulled over for years, whilst others must be instant; sometimes we don't get to choose the timing. The one thing we all hope for is the freedom to make decisions objectively based on the best information and in a calm frame of mind, but life just isn't like that. We’re faced with rapidly changing, high stakes, emotionally charged decisions fueling our anxiety. It can be insidious and infectious. Handled poorly, over time we may even experience emotional and physical stress triggering ever more poor decision-making.

Wouldn’t it be great to be able to sit back let the anxiety subside, and then decide? If you were a field commander faced with the possibility of being overrun by the enemy, YOU DON’T HAVE TIME – YOU DECIDE NOW!

I also hate to tell you this pressure is never going away!

“Neither comprehension nor learning can take place in an atmosphere of anxiety.

Rose Kennedy

On Anxious Decisions

There’s a strange but eventually understandable phenomenon where anxious decision-makers are more likely to seek only confirmatory external advice, are less able to discern good from bad advice, and will accept advice even from people with conflicts of interest. The greater the intensity of anxiety and stress the more driven to habitual decisions we become.

“Maturity is achieved when a person accepts life as full of tension.”  Joshua L. Liebman

Re-framing anxiety can free us from seeking questionable advice and making inappropriate habitual decisions. Fear drives anxiety and when we misunderstand the physical sensations triggered by fear, excitement, uncertainty, time pressure and importance we view the decision from a skewed perspective.

On Living In Reverse

Well, the good news arising from the basic research of Soares and colleagues is that “Stress-induced changes in human decision-making are reversible.” For those of you with a neuroscience inclination, the author’s general conclusion can be interpreted as “chronic stress biases decision-making strategies in humans toward habits, as choices of stressed subjects become insensitive to changes in outcome value“.

Using functional brain imaging techniques (fMRI), they demonstrate prolonged exposure to stress in humans causes an imbalanced activation of specific brain networks governing decision processes.

Importantly and reassuringly, a longitudinal assessment of the stressed individuals showed that both the structural and functional changes triggered by stress are reversible and once the stress is removed decisions become goal-directed and relevant.

Stress as an Option

I can hear you saying something along the lines of, “but the stress never goes.” This may be true, but you can alter the way you perceive the stressors and adopt mitigating measures such as mindfulness meditation, yoga, Tai Chi to offset the downsides of pressure and stress. All of these practices have been scientifically proven to reduce physical symptoms of stress.

“Stress is an ignorant state. It believes that everything is an emergency.”

Natalie Goldberg

Q: How can you re-frame your perception of anxiety generating situations? Let’s assume you can’t simply sit waiting for anxiety to subside or rely on advice or look for perfect solutions?

• Don’t wait until you’re faced with high stakes instant decisions.
• Start small and become accustomed to physically and emotionally sensing anxiety that’s associated with small, low impact everyday decisions.
• Appreciate the small buzzes you get next time you have to select from a complex menu, or your partner asks for a decision on which dress or suit they should buy. This is what I call “decision-making homeopathy”.

This "training" gets you comfortable with the physical and mental sensations of excitement and anxiety, adept at operating with it.

When you’re comfortable at this level, up the stakes by taking notice of your reaction to decision-making in increasingly stressful situations until you know you can make decisions under heavy incoming fire.

Your objective isn’t to squash anxiety but to function effectively alongside it, doing what must be done.

If you don’t believe me then take a short while to watch Kelly McGonigal’s fantastic TED talk“ How to make stress your friend” where she shows you that stress can actually protect you and help you live longer; it’s just how you view the triggers of stress that really matters.

A trouble shared is a trouble halved

There are a couple of important aspects to this credo. First, hearing ourselves describe something out loud has a completely different cognitive impact compared with quietly cogitating in our heads. It's as if someone else were saying it and we process through our "bull-shit filter".

If we take the courage to brainstorm our thoughts and ideas with other people not emotionally or financially connected but who appreciate the pressures and issues you experience, the greater the quality of analysis, feedback and advice. The upsurge of peer-to-peer executive groups is testament to the power of the collective consciousness. If you could see the things your peers see, if you could experience the value they perceive from what you do, if they could warn you of hidden threats you would make better decisions more often.

What can you do today to make a difference?

•   On a scale of 1 to 10 how much pressure are you under in any given day?

•   Who’s advice did you seek for today’s decisions?

•   Did this advice alter your decision?

•   How anxious do you feel other people are about the consequences of your decisions (scale of 1 to 10)?

•   Did they seek your advice or did you force it upon them?

•   Did your "advice" bias their decision in your favour?

•   Were your decisions today largely automatic or did you adapt to new circumstance and advice?

Join a peer-to-peer Executive Board.

Recommended Reading

Sidetracked: Why Our Decisions Get Derailed, and How We Can Stick to the Plan by Francesca Gino