Why leaders make poor decisions

1. Failure to check their facts, take the initiative to confirm assumptions, or gather additional input. Basically people were sloppy in their work and a bit lazy. This is a easy mistake to make because people go from their past experience and expect consistent results. As we all know, the pace of change is increasing and something that was true yesterday may not be true today.
2. Failure to plan for unexpected events. Most people tend to be fairly optimistic. It is difficult to consider the possibility of negative events in our lives and so most people assume the worst will not happen. Unfortunately, it happens fairly often. People die, get divorced, have accidents, markets crash, house prices go down, friends are unreliable, etc. etc. It often makes good sense to ask those “what if” questions and consider the impact of an unexpected event.
3. Indecisiveness. Today’s decisions are often very complex with a large body of data that is constantly changing. It is fairly easy to continue to study the data, to ask for one more report or perform yet one more analysis before a decision gets made. The reports and the analysis take much longer than expected, the decision gets delayed and the opportunity is missed. It takes courage to look at the data, consider the consequences and then move forward, but oftentimes indecision is much worse than making the wrong decision. Those who make the wrong decision can quickly turn the decision around and admit their mistake. Usually, it is the fear of being wrong that makes leaders indecisive.
4. Using the same old data or process they have always used. People get used to processes and approaches that work and tend not to look for newer improved approaches that work better.  Better the devil they know. Too often the old process is based on old assumptions that are no longer true.
5. Don’t challenge the facts or the people that provide them information. Many times people accept some facts without challenging them and going to other sources especially if they seem to support a preferred direction. Often when people gather facts, they bias the information by telling people what they want to hear and asking others to confirm their assumptions. When a stock analyst was forced to defend his position on a purchase of assets, he began to worry that by being pushed to defend his position he would become less objective, which is often the case.
6. Failure to connect the problem to the overall strategy. This is a classic case of winning the battle but losing the war. Too often, people get so deep into a problem that they lose sight of the overall objective they are trying to accomplish. Keeping a broad perspective can help leaders to see a problem differently.
7. Over-Dependent on others. When decisions don’t get made the problem often reveals one person waiting for another person, who is waiting for another person. Effective decision makers find a way to act independently when necessary.
8. Failure to gather input from others on their decisions. All our research on effective decision-making recognizes the fact that involving others with knowledge, experience and expertise will improve the quality of the decision. Many times people do not involve others because they want to take credit for a decision and unfortunately they get to take the blame for a bad decision also.
9. Lack of technical depth and failure to involve those who have expertise. When we lack even the basic knowledge and expertise we have no way to tell if a decision is brilliant or terrible. Leaders need enough technical depth to understand the implications of the decisions that they make. A leader is responsible to find the talent needed to make difficult decisions.
10. Failure to communicate the what, where, when and how associated with their decisions. Some good decisions become bad decisions because people do not understand or know about the decision. Communicating a decision, its implications and changes are critical to the successful implementation of a decision.