Helpful People Make the Worst Decisions

Photo by Daniela Holzer on Unsplash

When we find ourselves or our teams making regular mistakes, the knee-jerk response is to blame the people involved:

• “They need to do better!”
• “I’m just not working hard enough!”

Or, we doubt them:

• “They lack integrity! They can’t keep committments!”
• “Maybe I’m not smart enough!”

Oftentimes though, ineffective decision making may actually come from very smart and very committed people — talented people who are so incredibly helpful that they find themselves constantly pulled in a thousand directions, which drags on their ability to execute on their core competencies.

So instead of dismissing poor decision making as a people problem, focus first on evaluating the stability of the system or the processes they operate in:

• What is cognitive burden of the processes they’re embedded in? Can we put guardrails, or automated systems in place to force good behavior?
• What other responsibilities do they have? Can we simplify here? Do we need to bring on more team members to support?

The hard part is that this requires regular emotional engagement from leadership, who may themselves also be pulled in a thousand directions at any given time.