Contrary to a popular myth that an initiative is the key to success, any initiative which is based on bad decisions is a recipe for failure. The key to success is to make the best possible decisions. Here are some quotes about decisions.

“It is hard to imagine a more stupid or more dangerous way of making decisions than by putting those decisions in the hands of people who pay no price for being wrong.” – Thomas Sow

“You have a brain and mind of your own. Use it, and reach your own decisions.” —Napoleon Hill

“Our lives will depend upon the decisions which we make, for decisions determine destiny.” – Thomas S. Monson

“The roads we take are more important than the goals we announce. Decisions determine destiny.” --Frederick Speakman

“Life is a sum of all your choices” – Albert Camus

“I am not a product of my circumstances. I am a product of my decisions.” – Stephen R. Covey

“What one does is what counts and not what one had the intention of doing.” – Pablo Picasso

“It does not take much strength to do things, but it requires a great deal of strength to decide what to do.” – Elbert Hubbard

The fact of our life is that majority of people make bad decisions, which results in unhappy or miserable lives. Intensive research of this problem leads us to the conclusion that our mental biases are responsible for our bad decisions.

Over 200 mental biases were identified by researchers (see [1], p.123). The most frequent biases in decision making are the following:

Similarity bias –We prefer what’s like us over what’s different (see [3]).

Expedience bias –We prefer to act quickly (see [3]).

Experience bias –We take our own perception to be the objective truth (see [3]).

Distance bias –We prefer what’s close over what’s far away (see [3]).

Safety bias –We protect against loss more than we seek out gain (see [3]).

A confirmation bias is a cognitive bias that favors information that confirms your previously existing beliefs or biases (see [4]).

Groupthink is a cognitive bias in which the desire for harmony or conformity in the group influences the decision making process (see [5]).

A simple way to improve quality of our decisions is to follow this simple procedure.

Step 1. Recognize that we all have biases, which are based on some hidden assumptions (very often subconscious).

Step 2. Find all biases and hidden assumptions.

Step 3. For each hidden assumption play the “Devil’s advocate” game (accept the opposite position and find rationale reasons for it) to remove the biases and hidden assumptions from influencing the decision making process.

Let us consider an example.

Management of a small private hospital asked a cyber security expert to recommend a way to increase cyber security of the hospital. The main concern of the management was that local population has low cyber security culture. Also, the management wanted that the cyber security expert offered only low costs options and reserved the right to make the final decision to the management of the hospital.

The cyber security expert offered two options. In option A, the cyber security expert suggested to use an open source password manager and train all hundred employees how to use it. The cost of this option is $5,000. In option B, the cyber security expert suggested to give each employee a private dynamical passwords generator, which generates super strong unique passwords for each employee. The cost of this option is $1,900/year.

The management selected option A, because all managers had experience with open source passwords managers during their studies in universities and had no experience with dynamical passwords generators. Local hackers learned about this decision and by means of dictionary attacks (see [6]) discovered weak passwords of some employees. Using the compromised passwords the hackers installed malware on hospital’s computers, which encrypted all data, files, and paralyzed all activities in the hospital due to not functional hospital’s computer system. The hackers demanded a ransom of $500,000 from the hospital to stop the cyber attack and to restore functionality of the hospital’s computer system.

Frightened by seriousness of consequences (deaths of some patients, legal actions, damage to reputations, etc.) the management paid the ransom and implemented option B to increase cyber security and prevent similar cyber attacks on the hospital.

The reason of the bad decision in this case is that the management had several biases (experience, confirmation, and groupthink) and a hidden assumption that if experts train employees then all employees always will follow the instructions. If the management would followed the simple 3 steps method they would made the better decision.

References:

[1] Decision Quality, Carl Spetzier, etc., John Wiley & Sons Inc., 2016

[2] Decision Time, L. Alison & N. Shortland, Penguin Random House, 2021

[3] https://neuroleadership.com/your-brain-at-work/seeds-model-biases-affect-decision-making/

[4] https://www.verywellmind.com/what-is-a-confirmation-bias-2795024

[5] https://www.adcocksolutions.com/post/what-is-groupthink

[6] https://www.hypr.com/security-encyclopedia/dictionary-attack