11 Myths About Decision-Making

I have been aiming to discuss taking action and being decisive in two essays because there seems to be a belief that 'rationality' and mental models are all you need to succeed. Most influential people make better decisions and use thinking tools that assist them in achieving their goals more quickly.

This advice may sound familiar; it lies at the heart of books like Blink and Gary Klein’s The Power of Intuition, which promise to help readers harness their gut feelings. But for executives taught to methodically frame problems, consider alternatives, collect data, weigh the options, and then decide, cultivating emotional self-awareness may seem l... See more

Considering what motivates the decisions of others, especially when those decisions affect you, is also essential. Incentives matter. Take a negotiation course, because skilled negotiators are masters at figuring out what is important to the other party and arriving at mutually beneficial solutions. Even if you are not dealing directly with another

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There is something very wrong with that entire conventional model of decision-making, both within single minds and for groups as assumed in social-choice theory. It conceives of decision-making as a process of selecting from existing options according to a fixed formula (such as an apportionment rule or electoral system). But in fact that is what h

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What I’ve experienced in all these different contexts is that people are generally quite poor at explaining how one might go about making a high-quality decision. This difficulty isn’t just confined to novice poker players or college students or entry-level employees. Even when I ask C-level executives—who are literally full-time decision-makers—wh

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Rory Sutherland on why group decision making is often worse than personal judgement https://t.co/Gj6CRLLF40