At my office, people are buzzing about a funny commercial for the Adobe Marketing Cloud. Two marketing executives overhear hip millennial bike-messenger types talking about a new social media platform in an elevator.
“Are you on Woo-Woo?” one of the millennials asks.
“Are you kidding me?” the other replies. “Everyone’s on Woo-Woo.”
That’s all it takes for these smart, enterprising executives to plow their entire budget into winning on Woo-Woo. It’s a terrible decision, of course. Some time later, the millennials meet again: “Dude, are you still on Woo-Woo?”
“Nah, man, my mom’s on Woo-Woo.”
The mistakes that get away
Woo-Woo decisions aren’t just poor marketing moves — they’re preventable mistakes in all areas of the business. Smart people, and teams of smart people, fall prey to cognitive biases, team dynamics, lack of empathy and the like.
The results are hardly a laughing matter. They include unnecessary churn, false consensus, misaligned execution, the unproductive rehashing of prior decisions, inevitable surprises (not the good kind) and mistrust.
Improve your decision-making
What if you could improve the quality of decisions at your company? Advances in behavior economics and collective intelligence enable leadership teams to optimize decision-making.
Talented individuals don’t necessarily make a talented team; something more is required. Although cognitive biases steer us to irrational and sub-optimal decisions, leaders can “architect” winning decisions by nurturing new awareness and behaviors. The behavioral component is critical: Nothing really changes until behavior changes.
To improve decision-making, try to:
- Examine critical factors driving leadership team behavior. Do team members understand and agree on objectives? Are decision-makers skilled and committed? Is the team frustrated with how long it’s taking to decide? By exploring the organizational dimensions, you can create a road map for making decisions more effectively.
- Screen out common cognitive biases and rigorously test decisions. Ask yourself whether your team’s decisions have fallen victim to overconfidence and excessive optimism. Do team members favor alternatives that confirm an existing belief? Are they influenced by norms that value consensus over a realistic appraisal? Are generational differences causing them to weigh evidence certain ways? These are just some of the biases hard-wired into the brain that yield poor decisions. Decision tools and proven practices can help screen the critical elements of key decisions, and minimize biases.
- Proactively design leadership team dynamics. Evaluate whether team members really believe in the value of collective effort. Do they willingly defer to others with expertise when appropriate? Does each team member participate equally? Do they jointly own decisions? By incorporating recent developments in related scientific fields, you can better position the team so its value becomes more than the sum of its parts.
Woo-Woo decisions occur everywhere, but they don’t have to with a new appreciation of the right tools and practices. By pinpointing and embedding high impact team behaviors, you avoid common traps and make the right moves.
Steve Jacobs is a senior adviser at CLG Inc., a business management consultancy that advises executives on how to achieve new performance, culture change and lasting competitive advantage through the principles of applied behavioral science. Steve is the lead author of “The Behavior Breakthrough — Leading Your Organization to a New Competitive Advantage.”
