Oliver Sibony’s “You’re About to Make a Terrible Mistake!”
42 Techniques to Use Before You Make the Big Decision.
- Ensure sufficient cognitive diversity among participants
2. Make sufficient time for real discussion
3. Put dialogue on the agenda: topics “for discussion” vs. “for decision”.
4. Limit the use of PowerPoint presentations; consider replacing them with written memos
5. Ban misleading analogies and similar storytelling arguments
6. Impose a cooling-off period to discourage hasty conclusions
7. Encourage nuanced viewpoints by asking each participant for his or her “balance sheet”
8. Appoint a devil’s advocate
9. Ask for more than one proposal (“mandatory alternatives”)
10. Ask what you would do if the current options were off the table (“vanishing options”)
11. Require presenters to pitch competing views (“alternative stories”)
12. Run a premortem
13. Assemble an ad hoc committee (for example, “Six Amigos”)
14. Write up the list of deal breakers and review it at decision time (“memo in the CEO’s drawer”)
15. And don’t forget to… Set an ending time for the discussion (“discord plus deadline”)
16. Encouraging divergence Techniques Page Cultivate a network of informal advisors
17. Get unfiltered expert opinion
18. Keep your consultants in the dark about your own hypotheses
19. Create an official role of “outside challenger”
20. Create a “red team” or set up a “war-gaming” exercise
21. Use the “wisdom of crowds” to aggregate estimates (simple averages, prediction markets) or to collect suggestions
22. Build a model to “re-anchor” a resource allocation decision
23. Use multiple analogies to fight confirmation bias
24. Change the default to fight status quo bias (for instance, portfolio reviews)
25. Use standardized frameworks and templates for recurring decisions
26. For unique decisions, define decision criteria beforehand
27. “Stress-test” key assumptions (especially worst-case scenarios)
28. Take the “outside view” based on a reference class of comparable projects
29. Update your beliefs as new data becomes available (use Bayes’s Theorem if possible)
30. And don’t forget to… Find ways to cultivate humility (for example, the “anti-portfolio”)
31. Promoting agile decision-making dynamics Techniques Page Cultivate a friendly atmosphere
32. Foster a “speak up” culture [LINK] Align the incentives with the common interest
33. Find ways to learn for free
34. Conduct real experiments and allow them to fail
35. Do postmortems of successes, too
36. Increase your commitments gradually, instead of making big gambles
37. Recognize the right to fail, not the right to make mistakes
38. Strategize like a Texas sharpshooter: limit outside communication about specific strategies
39. Role-model the ability to change your mind based on facts and discussion
40. Split the decision-making power between two people (or more)
41. Decide in an “inner circle” or small committee without conflicts of interest
42. And don’t forget to… Make the decision and take responsibility for it—after sleeping on it