Swept by intuition: Bad decisions of good leaders
Pattern matching and using emotional information have honed our intuition. But the complexities of the ever-changing modern world demand a more nuanced approach even to the 'gut feeling'. Here's a look at some examples of bad decisions of good leaders
Pattern matching and using emotional information have honed our perceptions and instincts to ensure our survival through the ages. However, in the complex, ever-changing, modern world, these same mental processes can lead to faulty decision-making
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What do Brigadier General Matthew Broderick, chief of the Homeland Security Operations Center during hurricane Katerina and the Australian cricket team currently touring India have in common? All of them, despite being highly talented, met with failure due to flawed judgments driven by their distorted intuitions. How did this happen? The answer lies in the way the human brain processes information that can lead the most astute decision-makers astray.
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Human intuition works on two principles, pattern recognition and emotional tagging, both complex unconscious processes involving multiple regions of the brain. We store our experiences and judgments in our memory. The emotions associated with these experiences, often the consequences of the decisions we make, also attach themselves to these memories as emotional tags. When we encounter a new situation, we subconsciously do pattern matching by comparing the current situation to the past experiences stored in our memory. The closest match in this process, along with the associated emotional tags, guides and informs our intuitive thinking and decision-making. This is what we call “gut feelâ€. This process allows a master chess player to assess a complex position on the board and come up with a quality move in seconds. Neuroscience research has shown that when the emotion processing centres of our brains are damaged, our decision-making becomes slow and impaired even though our analytical abilities remain intact.
Pattern matching and using emotional information have honed our perceptions and instincts to ensure our survival through the ages. However, in the complex, ever-changing, modern world, these same mental processes can lead to faulty decision-making. In August of 2005, Brigadier General Matthew Broderick filed a report to the POTUS that hurricane Katrina had, in fact, not breached the levees in New Orleans despite multiple contrary reports, thus delaying relief efforts and resulting in disastrous consequences. Broderick had significant experience, both domestically and abroad, in on-ground operations during past hurricanes. His prior experience told him that early reports in these situations are often false and that he should wait for a credible ground report before acting. However, his pattern matching was misleading in this case, due to a subtle but crucial difference. New Orleans was a city below sea level, and all his earlier experiences were with cities that were above sea level. The emotional tags from his earlier successful decisions, combined with the superficial similarity of New Orleans to other cities, caused his intuition to betray him.
Also read: The long and short of it: What makes CEOs decide?
Almost 17 years later, the Australian cricket team's decision to sweep their way out of the second Test match in the Arun Jaitley Stadium in Delhi on February 19, 2023, provides another opportunity to understand how the human mind makes decisions and what can be done to avoid these seemingly natural decisions that go woefully wrong. Australia scored merely 113 runs in their second innings and lost to India by six wickets on Day 3 of a five-day match.
[This article has been published with permission from IIM Bangalore. www.iimb.ac.in Views expressed are personal.]
