Dan Heath, best-selling author and senior fellow at the Duke University Center for the Advancement of Social Entrepreneurship, began by acknowledging that psychologists have learned a great deal about why bad decisions happen, but Heath’s research question was “How do we prevent them from happening?”

Corporate mergers and acquisitions, for example, are among the most highly analyzed decisions made, yet 80 percent create no value. A study of 2,207 executives noted Heath, showed that they said that 60 percent of all decisions were bad.

What are the four biggest villains of good decision making?

1. Narrow framing, putting blinders on.
2. Confirmation bias, looking for information that only supports us.
3. Short-term emotion, anxiety, and stress.
4. Over confidence, thinking we know more than we do.

Awareness of these problems, Heath continued, won’t save us; we need a process:

Widen our options, don’t cherry pick. Don’t be blind to choices. Consider more than one alternative. The questions should not just be whether or not to do “X,” but should have at least one more option. Adding one more option can boost the odds of success.

Reality test assumptions. Confirmation bias interferes with our decision making. We want something to be true, so we test our assumptions only with those who will confirm them. Data is not inherently an antidote to bad decisions. Push to hear disconfirming information in order to make good decisions. Resist the “executive bubble.”

Attain distance before deciding. Agonizing decisions are often a sign of a values conflict. Don’t let short-term emotions interfere. Action steps to gain distance include asking “If a panel of 10 citizens studied the issue for a month, what would they recommend?” Or “What would our successors do?”

Prepare to be wrong. Set up a decision tripwire to tell us when to reconsider a decision. You may not put in place noise rules for a new event center, but plan to review citizen complaints in six months. That’s the trip wire for reconsidering a decision.

City and county managers, remarked Heath, are the trustees of public institutions. It’s a daunting responsibility. As he continued to address the audience, he said: “You are the people who make magic out of what could be a mess. Your decisions are like the clockworks of your communities. You don’t seem to get much recognition or appreciation. I want to say ‘thank you’ for the work that you do.”

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