Why do we make wrong decisions?

 Why do we make wrong decisions? 

(Emotional Management for Personal & Professional Growth Series)

We are discussing the thinking traps which affect our quality of decision making. Last week we discussed the thinking trap of "giving excess weightage to the first information." The second thinking trap is " Not to disturb the status quo."

 
The term "status quo" can be defined as preserving the existing practices or doing comfortable things.
 
We believe that we make decisions logically, but our mind prefers to preserve the existing practices or comfort when we make decisions.

For example,

we prefer to go to the office on a fixed route and timings;
being comfortable to deal with a few chosen vendors/customers/banks or people in the business;
having lunch or free time chatting with a few colleagues;
choosing a fixed seating location in a meeting or training session;
sticking with fixed agenda in regular meetings.

We hesitate to disturb what we feel more comfortable to us. That is the nature of our thinking process of not disturbing the status quo.
 
Why do we have the thinking of sticking on to comfort?

The source for sticking to the status quo or comfort is our internal ego or fear. When there is change, there will be some challenges; we need to take responsibility, there will be some actions that may be favorable or non-favorable, which may affect our status. That is why we prefer to stick to the existing situation as much as possible.

That is the reason when you drive some new initiatives in the organization,it would become a challenge as generally, people do not want to disturb the existing way of familiar working to new way of working.
 
 
How to overcome this thinking trap?

• As long as the status quo is not affecting our personal or our business objective, no need to change. Alternatively, if you realize the objective is not achieved due to sticking to the status quo, we need to change it. That awareness or clarity between current status vs. goal is required.
• We need not conclude that the existing status quo is the only option available. We need to be open to multiple options, which can be practiced by asking what else in every decision-making situation.
• Constantly evaluating the cost-benefit analysis in any options against the status quo will help change the perception of sticking to the status quo.

We need to be aware of thinking traps while making decisions.
  
Let us discuss some other thinking traps next week.
 
Have a great week ahead!