By Amantha Imber  |  4 April 2018

Want to improve the quality of your decisions? Try these suggestions.

Leaders in almost all organisations make bad decisions. Poor hiring choices, deciding to launch a product that ends up failing in the market, and throwing more resources onto flailing projects are examples of such decisions.

One reason for the abundance of bad decision making is that most managers haven’t received formal training in how to make effective decisions. Fortunately, for those who haven’t, there is a great deal of research to help.

Here are four proven ways to make better decisions.

1. Don’t make big decisions after lunch

Research shows that the more decisions someone makes over the course of a day, the worse the quality those decisions become.

We start every day with a set amount of cognitive resources. Every single decision made, big or small, eats away at these resources. Therefore, schedule your most important decisions for first thing in the morning, or at least before lunch, to optimise results.

2. Dim the lights

Emotion is one of the biggest enemies of effective decision making. Strong emotions can lead to decisions that are overly influenced by what feels important right now but may have poorer outcomes over the longer term.

To help reduce the impact of emotion when making decisions, turn down the lights. Research from the University of Toronto Scarborough has shown that emotions are felt more intensely in brightly lit environments, so dimming the lights should reduce the impact of intense emotions that may be clouding your decision making.

3. Avoid like-minded people

People often default to making decisions, especially work-related ones, to others who they feel are similar to themselves.

Scientists have found that we need to deliberately introduce diversity to arrive at better decisions. Research from Tufts University found that racially diverse groups perform significantly better on decision-making tasks compared with racially homogenous groups.

For example, in one study, mock juries consisting of both white and racially diverse people (compared with all-white juries) had broader deliberations, made fewer factual errors, and recalled more facts about the case that were incorporated into the final decision.

4. Apply mindfulness

 Many bad decisions can be related to the “sunk cost fallacy”, where the more a person is invested in something, the more difficult it is to abandon it.

Research has shown that engaging in 15 minutes of mindfulness meditation increases resistance to this.

So, the next time a big decision presents itself, be deliberate about using strategies to maximise decision making effectiveness.