Cognitive biases lead to typical business strategic analyses such as SWOT giving a false sense of comfort and security. The result? Appalling oversights that ruin profitable businesses and bring down high-flying careers.
Because we usually feel that everything is going to go according to plan, we don’t pay nearly enough attention to potential problems and fail to account for them in our plans. This problem stems from a dangerous judgment error called planning fallacy.
Avoiding Disastrous Decisions involves:
1) Deciding the decision criteria
2) Weighing importance of criteria
3) Grading your options using the criteria
4) Checking with your head and gut
5) Sticking to your choice
We intuitively overestimate how well others read us and how well we read others in negotiations, a dangerous judgment error called illusion of transparency. This mental blindspot leads to disastrous results in negotiations and other important communications.
