Bad decision? You’re not alone, but let’s try to avoid making the same mistake again…
Published on 23 May 2024 • Written by Dr Lisa Colledge
Do you sometimes wonder why bad decisions ever got made? Especially when evidence was available that suggested pretty clearly that it was, in fact, a bad decision?
The reason is that most people are not very good at making objective decisions. Their brains are distracted and tricked by irrelevant inputs. I’m sorry, that’s just how it is.
But never fear. Humanity contains such diversity in the way our brains work, that a specialist brain-type can always be found. The trick to having these decision-making saviors around in your organization is to make sure that your culture is designed in a way that attracts them, while also enabling them to work their magic.
Key take aways
Most people don’t make decisions rationally. Reading that, it’s likely you feed irritated, or upset, or offended. Or you think I’m wrong and stupid and are about to stop reading. Which is proof of a kind of my point. I am stating a scientifically proven fact. It’s not personal.
There is one type of brain which is unsurpassed at objective decision-making. It doesn’t get distracted by irrelevant information. It doesn’t fall prey to our tendency to prefer to pay attention to positive information, and to pass over negative information. That amazing type of brain is autistic.
Autistic team members increase your team’s success by their superior focus on data and ability to use it rationally to make decisions. But this specialization comes at a cost, such as struggling to understand social cues. If you want to have an autist-attracting-and-enabling culture, your best bet is to get ahead and create it in anticipation, instead of waiting until you have an important decision to make and then trying to change things (too late!).
Most people are easily distracted from focusing on information, and selective in which information they use to make decisions.
You’re probably thinking, “Most people, but not me. I can focus! And my decisions are always based on all the evidence I can lay my hands on. I just never have all of the data I need! OK, sometimes I play a hunch, but I’ve been doing this for years, so my hunch is always based on education and experience. We’re fine. We’ve got this covered.”
Please don’t feel insulted. Take a breath. Irrational decision making is just the way most of our brains work. You have other strengths. We are not all good at everything.
But please ask yourself.
Even if your organization’s decision making is OK, can it be even better?
Can you build your team’s confidence that a decision represents the best decision based on all data available, to get everyone’s work pointing in the same direction?
The answer to both these questions is — yes, you can.
One more question: how valuable would it be to your team’s motivation and success to know that it houses superior skills in decision making?
You’ll have to answer that question yourself (although I have a hunch).
There is a type of brain that is unsurpassed at focus and objective decision-making. That is the autistic brain. Yes, there are things it is not very good at, just like every other brain in the world, but focus and objective decision-making? Rest easy, autists have this covered.
I’m going to share some research that underpins what I am saying, but before I do, I’m going to talk about the opportunity this offers to your organization, and how you can take a step in the right direction to take advantage of this opportunity.
I want this incredible focus and objective decision making in my organization. How do I get it?
Autists are highly specialized in focus and objectivity. Of course, allists (“non-autists”) have these skills as well to some extent: this is why everyone tends to think, “We’re fine. We’ve got this covered.” But you will greatly increase the chances that your organization excels in these business-critical skills if your organization attracts and enables people whose brains are specialized in this behavior.
Autists’ amazingness in focus and objectivity comes at a cost. One brain can’t do everything, which is why evolution has made different types of brains specialize in different things. Autists tend to struggle, for example, to understand social interaction like small talk and body language (learn more in this article); they can do it, but it’s hard work, and distracts energy and focus from other deliverables. If you want full focus and objectivity (you do!), then you need to remove unnecessary brain exhaustion, such as by stopping surprising people with agendas only when they are in the meeting, and insisting the camera is turned on.
An autist-attracting-and-enabling culture is not one that happens overnight, and it is not one that you can turn on because you have a critical decision to make tomorrow.
An autist-attracting-and-enabling culture is one, however, that you can create in anticipation of these critical decisions. It’s best to get ready to welcome these brilliant brains.
The best thing? These kinds of teams are better places for allists to work in as well: everyone benefits.
Extra bonus: if you lead with your culture, instead of expecting autists to declare their diagnosis and request accommodations, you don’t depend on vulnerable people daring to trust that sharing a personal situation will lead to better working conditions. You don’t even depend on people knowing they’re autistic. You will simply know that you are ahead of the game because you have used the needs of autists to build a best-in-class, engaging culture where you maximize the chance that everyone is contributing at the tops of their games.
Accuracy footnote: you almost certainly have autists in your organization already, whether you know it or not. They are probably not working at the top of their game because a lot of their energy is drained into agenda-free meetings with their videos on. They will be more productive if you start off on this route, and you won’t have to wait for long before they naturally contribute more of their skills!
How do you know that autists are great at focusing?
Professor Nilli Lavie researches attention. She has shown that we have a limited amount of visual attention, and it can be exhausted. Doing something more complicated exhausts it more quickly. And ignoring irrelevant distractions also exhausts it more quickly.
Her team compared how quickly autists and allists exhausted their attention. They tested this by asking participants to indicate whether they saw an X or an N inside a circle with five other letters in it, and also to look for a grey squiggle outside the ring that was only there half the time.
Autists and allists did as well as each other when two of the other letters were similar to an X or N, and the others were Os. Above 2 letters, allists were significantly less accurate at detecting the grey squiggle. Their finite visual attention was more easily distracted and exhausted.
The most challenging, exhausting test that Professor Lavie posed made absolutely no difference to the focus of autists.
What evidence is there that autists are more rational in decision making?
Allists typically process information irrationally, with bias, based on how it is presented. Autists are more resistant to this kind of bias.
Here is one example about Sunk Cost Bias:
Allists struggle to detach their decisions from what has gone before. Their objectivity is reduced by thinking about non-recoverable money, time, and effort that has already been sunk into a project.
Rationally, being non-recoverable means that this information is irrelevant in the decision you have to make now. But it’s difficult for allists to leave this sunk cost behind, whereas autists’ decisions are not influenced by this Sunk Cost Bias.
And a second example about the Framing Effect:
Would you rather keep $30 of $50, or lose $20 of $50?
Would you rather eat 20% fat-containing or 80% fat-free crisps?
Controlled experiments show that most people choose to keep $30, or eat 80% fat-free crisps, although logically you’d expect responses to be split 50:50 because in each case there is only really one option.
Allists are susceptible to this Framing Effect, with twice as many people favouring a fact framed positively to the identical option framed negatively.
But with autists, you see the logical 50:50 split.
There are many more examples, but you get the idea.
To conclude
Every skill can be expressed in a positive or negative way. Whether we experience it positively or negatively depends on the environment that the skill is in.
We might not always view rationality positively in a social situation, but when we apply it to a difficult decision that needs to be made, our perspective changes.
Our job is to match skills to situation, while ensuring we provide the right environment for the skills to be able to flourish.
References
Anna M. Remington, John G. Swettenham and Nilli Lavie (2012) ‘Lightening the Load: Perceptual Load Impairs Visual Detection in Typical Adults but Not in Autism’, Journal of Abnormal Psychology 121(2), pp. 544–551.
Liron Rozenkrantz, Anila D’Mello and John Gabrieli (2012) ‘Enhanced rationality in autism spectrum disorder’, Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 25(8), pp. 685–696.
I’m Dr Lisa Colledge, and I help ambitious leaders build future-ready teams they trust to deliver now and adapt to whatever’s next — driving engagement, performance, and enduring resilience.
Learn more about building Neuro-Inspired Teams that outpace, outperform, and outlast your competition.
