9 Habits That Lead to Terrible Decisions

Several years ago we came up with a great idea for a new leadership-development offering we thought would be valuable to everyone. We had research demonstrating that when people embarked on a self-development program, their success increased dramatically when they received follow-up encouragement.  We developed a software application to offer that sort of encouragement. People could enter their development goals, and the software would send them reminders every week or month asking how they were doing, to motivate them to keep on going. We invested a lot of time and money in this product.
But it turned out that people did not like receiving the e-mails and found them more annoying than motivating. Some of our users came up with a name for this type of software. They called it “nagware.” Needless to say, this product never reached the potential we had envisioned.  Thinking about the decisions we had made to create this disappointing result led us to ask the question, “What causes well-meaning people to make poor decisions?”
Some possibilities came immediately to mind – people make poor decisions when under severe time pressure or when they don’t have access to all the important information (unless they’re are explaining the decision to their boss, and then it is often someone else’s fault).
But we wanted a more objective answer. In an effort to understand the root cause of poor decision making, we looked at 360-feedback data from more than 50,000 leaders and compared the behavior of those who were perceived to be making poor decisions with that of the people perceived to be making very good decisions. We did a factor analysis of the behaviors that made the most statistical difference between the best and worst decision makers. Nine factors emerged as the most common paths to poor decision making. Here they are in order from most to least significant.

1. Laziness. This showed up as a failure to check facts, to take the initiative, to confirm assumptions, or to gather additional input. Basically, such people were perceived to be sloppy in their work and unwilling to put themselves out. They relied on past experience and expected results simply to be an extrapolation of the past.
2. Not anticipating unexpected events. It is discouraging to consistently consider the possibility of negative events in our lives, and so most people assume the worst will not happen. Unfortunately, bad things happen fairly often. People die, get divorced, and have accidents. Markets crash, house prices go down, and friends are unreliable. There is excellent research demonstrating that if people just take the time to consider what might go wrong, they are actually very good at anticipating problems. But many people just get so excited about a decision they are making that they never take the time to do that simple due-diligence.
3. Indecisiveness. At the other end of the scale, when faced with a complex decision that will be based on constantly changing data, it’s easy to continue to study the data, ask for one more report, or perform yet one more analysis before a decision gets made. When the reports and the analysis take much longer than expected, poor decision makers delay, and the opportunity is missed. It takes courage to look at the data, consider the consequences responsibly, and then move forward. Oftentimes indecision is worse than making the wrong decision. Those most paralyzed by fear are the ones who believe that one mistake will ruin their careers and so avoid any risk at all.
4. Remaining locked in the past. Some people make poor decisions because they’re using the same old data or processes they always have. Such people get used to approaches that worked in the past and tend not to look for approaches that will work better. Better the devil they know. But, too often, when a decision is destined to go wrong, it’s because the old process is based on assumptions that are no longer true. Poor decision makers fail to keep those base assumptions in mind when applying the tried and true.
5. Having no strategic alignment. Bad decisions sometimes stem from a failure to connect the problem to the overall strategy. In the absence of a clear strategy that provides context, many solutions appear to make sense. When tightly linked to a clear strategy, the better solutions quickly begin to rise to the top.
6. Over-dependence. Some decisions are never made because one person is waiting for another, who in turn is waiting for someone else’s decision or input. Effective decision makers find a way to act independently when necessary.
7. Isolation. Some of those leaders are waiting for input because they’ve not taken steps to get it in a timely manner or have not established the relationships that would enable them to draw on other people’s expertise when they need to. All our research (and many others’) on effective decision making recognizes that involving others with the relevant knowledge, experience, and expertise improves the quality of the decision. This is not news. So the question is why. Sometimes people lack the necessary networking skills to access the right information. Other times, we’ve found, people do not involve others because they want the credit for a decision. Unfortunately they get to take the blame for the bad decisions, as well.
8. Lack of technical depth. Organizations today are very complex, and even the best leaders do not have enough technical depth to fully understand multifaceted issues. But when decision makers rely on others’ knowledge and expertise without any perspective of their own, they have a difficult time integrating that information to make effective decisions. And when they lack even basic knowledge and expertise, they have no way to tell if a decision is brilliant or terrible. We continue to find that the best executives have deep expertise. And when they still don’t have the technical depth to understand the implications of the decisions they face, they make it their business to find the talent they need to help them.
9. Failure to communicate the what, where, when, and how associated with their decisions. Some good decisions become bad decisions because people don’t understand – or even know about — them. Communicating a decision, its rational and implications, is critical to the successful implementation of a decision.

Waiting too long for others’ input. Failing to get the right input at the right time. Failing to understand that input through insufficient skills. Failing to understand when something that worked in the past will not work now. Failing to know when to make a decision without all the right information and when to wait for more advice. It’s no wonder good people make bad decisions. The path to good decision making is narrow, and it’s far from straight. But keeping in mind the pitfalls can make any leader a more effective decision maker.

 by Jack Zenger and Joseph Folkman

Source 
HBR Blog Network

Keep Yourself Sharp

Everybody wants to sharp, Let us see how we can become sharp. 
Nobody can remember everything,so don't beat yourself
Nobody can remember everything, so relax if you don't remember something. Don't blame yourself and put down yourself. You have to use variety of things to remember everything. They include simple note taking to recording the conversation. Daily make a list of things to be done and keep ticking them as you do them. You will also feel something accomplished at each tick and once you finished the whole page, you can treat yourself.

Challenge yourself
Ordinary is just plain boring. You can start to do things in a better way be it your job or talking to your kid. Try set some impossible goals. Try to do things deliberately in a different way. It sharpens you mind. Solve problems on Logic, Problem solving, Mental orientations and corrective thought process.

Healthy Body = Healthy Mind
Take care of your Health, Healthy eating, Exercise , Sufficient Sleep help to keep one sharp. If you fall ill your sharpness and productivity decreases sharply. Drink plenty of water.

Express Yourself
Be Forthcoming with your thoughts, Emotions and actions. This makes your mind the effort and thus make you sharp and active.

Never old to learn
Whatever be the age you can learn, Lenin learnt Bycycling in old Age. Many of the Businessman learnt their techniques of business very late and became successful. So it is never late to try and learn new things. Learn some skills and Management to do things well.

Complement Yourself.
Treat yourself as you treat others. Some of us can set very high standards and become biggest critic of our actions and results. Always compliment yourself regardless what others say about your successful actions. You can divide large projects into small projects and complement yourself of achieving every mini goal you have set to achieving the larger goal.

Clarity
Clarify your thoughts and set your goals., Know what you want to become in life. Especially clarity on the purpose of each action you undertake, thatway you bring clarity to your thoughts, feelings and actions.

Self Esteem
Always look for positives, just not the negatives. That is count your blessings or keep a bragging journal, that way your can improve your self esteem. Self esteem is essential for analyzing the situation dispassionately and thus making you sharp.

Slave to Technology
Cut the tech, use your mind more. That should be more. Man is very smart in making tools that substitute the work he does that is why we are the most intelligent compared to other animals. But the flip side is decrease in sharpness. Cut the technology and use yourself more. Make calculations by hand, Call on people than leaving a message etc.

Your own Master
Make your decisions, Keep your own agenda , not set by others. Some can be doing the agenda set by others, which leads to disinterest in what we are doing and why we are doing. So decide for yourself what you are going to do and do it at your own time, not set by others.

Relax
Take a Break, Relax to your hobby. Dont always pushing for things. Take hobby not related to your profession and enjoy.

Work = Life
Make your every action a journey, not a task.  Like it is said in Bhagavat Gita :Path is life. The Path you undertake is life. That Journey is your life. Dont focus too much on the result. Enjoy the process.

Sleep
Sleep enough and well. Sleep recharges your body and refreshes your brain. Brain organises the days information in the night. So sleep is as essential as the work you do.

Eat Healthy
Ayurveda Says you are what you eat. So eat what is good for you and your body. Eat in proper quantities and proper proportions in healthy nutrients. Eat to your work need.

Habits
Cut Bad Habits and Cultivated Goods habits. Habits is what gives us consistency and ultimately defines Us. A Man is what is habits are. So Develop healthy successful habits.

Art of Time Management

Five Time Management Mistakes that Wastes a lot of Time

Have you heard people say
“Time Flies”,
“There is no Time”,
“Where is the Time”
and sort of pharases.

Some of the major flaws that people do which becomes an excuse for the above mentioned pharases.For all those who would like to master their time management skills, must avoid these 5 major Time Management Mistakes.

1. Procrastination: Those things which have to be done now are being procrastinated of being postponed. This is one of the traits which is not outside but within us. We have made up a habit that we will do it later as it is not urgent now, we keep on delaying it till one day it becomes burning and urgent, and then we have no choice to act on it. At this point of time, we have to leave aside something that was important but not urgent to complete this task.Many of the corporate executives also get a kick from doing something that is urgent, they love to take pressure, their common phrase is “ohh, don’t worry there is still a lot of time”.
2. Do it Myself Attitude:"This is too important. Better let me do it." "By the time I show them how to do it, I will finish it myself." There are these executives and managers who always want to be in the thick of the things. They also get a feeling of threat if some one else starts doing what I do. Some have this misconception about their indispensability.
3. No Clearly Defined Goals:Because we do not know what to do, we keep on doing whatever comes our way. We keep on working very hard but still do not get results or the sense of achievement because we never have defined what we want to achieve. “A journey of thousand miles begins with the first single step.” We all want to take the first step and we are ready to take it, unfortunately we have not defined our journey so we do not know in which direction to take the first step.
4. Not taking Decisions:One of the major mistakes which waste a lot of our time is in-decision. We keep on procrastinating our decisions. We do not take the right decision at the right time be it with our professional life or our personal or social life or be it related to our health. And unfortunately many of our decisions are not our decisions at all. They are being imposed on us by our boss, colleagues, family and friends. We also have this urge to be perfect at time and we need a lot of data and testimony to justify our decisions and also always we want to be right at all the time so we remain in-decisive.
5. No Action:This one is the giant of the time waster which waste chunk of our time. We do not Act on our Goals, we do not take any action on the decisions we make. Many a time people decide to change their habits and behaviour but seldom they take any action step on their plan. So no action – no results.

Some times people who do not have clarity of goals, do not see the destination, so, if this set of people act today and cloud sit with a book and pen and start writing down their goal, probably this action step will bring them closer towards their goal.

So if you want to start managing your time, start managing the above five mistakes. So here is your short brief powerful action plan:

Step 1: Stop Procrastination

Step 2: Empower people around you

Step 3: Write down your goals of paper

Step 4: Make those tough decisions

Step 5: ACT now on the above 4 steps.

Time management is all about self management. The better you manage your self, automatically your time is managed.