Common Mistakes, Barriers, and Group Decisions

Decision making goes wrong in recognisable ways. Decision makers fall into specific mistakes. Particular barriers stand in the way of good decisions. Group decision making has its own pattern of advantages and pitfalls. Knowing these failure modes is the first step to avoiding them.

Six common mistakes

Decision makers fall into a recognisable set of common mistakes.

Being too dependent on expert information

Some people rely too much on experts who are not actually experts. Widening the search and the sources helps.

A school head facing a difficult decision may defer to an “expert” without questioning the expertise. The consultant brought in to advise on curriculum may not know the school’s context. The textbook supplier’s recommendation serves her own sales targets, not the school’s needs. The “education expert” speaking at a conference may have left the classroom decades ago.

The mitigation is to widen the search. Consult multiple sources. Talk to people inside the school who deal with the issue daily. Treat expertise as one input, not the answer.

Overconfidence

Overconfidence narrows the search and forecloses options too early. The remedy is to humble the over-confident attitude and stay open to alternatives.

A decider who is too sure of herself stops considering alternatives. She decides quickly and ignores evidence that suggests she might be wrong.

The mitigation is humility (covered in the Level 5 chapter). A reflective decider asks “what if I am wrong about this?” The question opens space for evidence that might change her mind.

Underestimating information from others

Devaluing information from others is a big mistake. A little respect for unsolicited and volunteered input is healthy in the decision making process.

A school head may dismiss input from junior teachers, students, parents, or support staff. The dismissed sources often have information she lacks. A support staff member may know about the staffroom conflict before the deputy head does. The receptionist may know which parents are unhappy before the complaints reach the principal.

The mitigation is to ask widely and listen. The information from unexpected sources is often the most useful.

Filtering data

When the decider only chooses information that is in her favour, the decision becomes biased and the unfavourable details get missed. Stay open to ideas.

Filtering is a form of confirmation bias. The decider selects information that supports her preferred option and ignores information that does not. The decision proceeds as if the filtered-out information did not exist.

The mitigation is to actively seek disconfirming evidence. Before deciding, ask: what would make me change my mind? Look for that evidence.

Hearing and seeing only what we want

Each individual has preferences and biases that pull her toward certain information. The best way to deal with it is to name your biases and stay open to information that contradicts them.

This is closely related to filtering but operates at the perceptual level. The decider does not even notice the information that contradicts her preferences. She is not consciously filtering; she literally does not see what does not fit her expectations.

The mitigation is harder than for active filtering. The decider has to deliberately seek out the contradicting view: ask a contrarian colleague, read an opposing argument, run a “red team” exercise where someone argues against the decision.

Ignoring intuition

On many occasions a decider is aware at a subconscious level of the right course of action and then ignores that signal. Intuition is useful in non-standard situations and in expedient decision making.

Intuition is often dismissed as unreliable. Dismissing it has a real cost: experienced decision makers have absorbed many patterns through experience, and intuition is partly the signal of those patterns.

The skill is using intuition without being captured by it. Use intuition as a check: “the data say A, but my gut says B; what is the gut noticing that the data are missing?” Sometimes the gut is right; sometimes it is bias. The questioning is the work.

Barriers to effective decision making

Barriers to good decisions fall into three main categories.

Psychological biases

Three specific biases beyond the ones covered earlier.

Illusion of control

The illusion of control is the belief that you can influence events even when you have no control over what will happen. The overconfidence it produces leads decision makers to ignore risks and overstate the odds of success.

A school head may believe she can control variables that are actually outside her control. She decides as if her effort alone will produce the outcome, ignoring external factors like government policy changes, economic shifts, or demographic trends.

Framing effects

Framing effects are decision biases shaped by how the problem or the alternatives are phrased. A classic example: option A has a 70% chance of profit and option B has a 30% chance of loss. The choices are mathematically equivalent. Managers reliably pick option A.

The example is from Bateman and Zeithaml. Two options that are mathematically identical (70 percent chance of profit; 30 percent chance of loss) get different reactions because of how they are framed. The first sounds positive; the second sounds negative.

A school head should rewrite her decisions in different framings before committing. “We will succeed with 70 percent probability” vs “We will fail with 30 percent probability” should produce the same decision. If they do not, framing is biasing the choice.

Discount the future

Discounting the future is the bias of giving short-term costs and benefits more weight than longer-term ones. A common example: people avoid a dental check-up today even though the condition may worsen later.

Future costs are discounted relative to present ones, often too heavily. A school postpones essential maintenance because the cost is now and the consequence is later. Then a roof collapses.

The mitigation is to make future costs concrete in present terms. Not “we should fix this someday” but “if we do not fix this in 2026, the cost in 2027 will be triple”.

Time pressures

Fast settings push managers to act quickly, and slow decisions can become irrelevant. But fast decisions can ignore caution, suppress conflict, and skip consultation. Managers cut quality. The speed-trap is dangerous.

Time pressure is real but often overstated. A school head who decides everything urgently produces worse decisions. The mitigation is to distinguish what genuinely needs speed from what feels urgent but can actually wait.

Social realities

Many decisions are made by groups rather than by individual managers. Even a lone manager is accountable to a boss and to others and must consider how many people will react. Important decisions are marked by conflict among interested parties, so most outcomes are shaped by social interaction, bargaining, and politics.

Decisions are political. A school head’s decisions affect parents, board members, staff, students, and government. Each has preferences. Even the “best” decision technically may not be the best decision politically.

This is uncomfortable but real. A school head who pretends decisions are purely rational misses the political dimension and produces decisions that are technically right and politically infeasible.

Group decision making

Group decisions have their own pattern of strengths and weaknesses worth covering in their own right.

Why use a group

Given enough time, groups usually produce higher-quality decisions than most individuals acting alone.

Three reasons:

1. More information. Multiple people bring multiple pieces of knowledge.
2. Multiple perspectives. Different angles surface considerations one person would miss.
3. Intellectual stimulation. Discussion produces better thinking than solo deliberation.

The limit

Hill (1982) found that groups are often inferior to the best individual on the team.

If one person in the group is significantly more capable than the others, the group’s decision will often be worse than that person’s solo decision. The group dynamic dilutes her contribution.

The mitigation is to weight contributions, not to give equal voice to everyone. The most knowledgeable person on a topic should have more influence on that topic, even in a group setting.

Common errors in groups

Beyond the individual mistakes covered earlier, groups produce specific errors:

1. Groupthink. The group converges on a decision without rigorous testing because dissent feels uncomfortable.
2. Diffusion of responsibility. No one feels accountable for the decision; everyone thinks someone else will catch the mistake.
3. Dominant voices. The most senior or loudest person’s view drives the decision regardless of merit.
4. False consensus. People go along because they think everyone agrees, when actually most have private doubts.

A school head running group decision making should be alert to these patterns. The best protection is to invite explicit dissent (“what does the case against this decision look like?”) and to weight expertise (“on this issue, who in the room knows most?”).

Flashcard

What is the framing effect?

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Answer

A bias where how a problem is phrased changes the decision, even when the underlying choice is mathematically identical.

A classic example: “70 percent chance of profit” and “30 percent chance of loss” are the same option, but they pull decisions in different directions.

The second card pairs the bias with a way to counter it.

Flashcard

How should a decision maker counter the framing effect?

Tap to reveal

Answer

Rewrite the decision in different framings before committing.

If the choice changes based on framing, framing is biasing the decision and the decider needs to reconsider on the underlying merits.