Idea in Brief
The Problem
Many leaders overrely on their gut instinct or personal experiences when making decisions—despite decades of admonitions about the dangers of doing so.
The Root Cause
Executives often think that what worked for them in the past—the successes that earned them their leadership roles—will work in the future. And their subordinates often reinforce those feelings.
The Solution
Senior managers should take a scientific approach to making decisions. They should challenge assumptions and investigate anomalies by articulating testable hypotheses and conducting rigorous experiments that generate conclusive evidence.
Every day, managers make decisions about products, customers, resource allocation, employee pay, and more, basing them on assumptions that have never been critically examined, much less challenged. “I’ve always been successful doing it this way and never thought about doing it another way” is what we often hear when managers are asked why they didn’t question practices that turned out to be faulty. But when skeptics show that ideas underlying practices are wrong, confounding, or even costly, leaders grasp the importance of systematically testing assumptions.
