How to Improve Decision Making Skills: Interview with Dr. Gleb Tsipursky - Ep#56

On this episode of the Strategy & Leadership Podcast, we're joined Dr. Gleb Tsipursky, CEO of Disaster Avoidance Experts LLC and author of Never Go With Your Gut: How Pioneering Leaders Make the Best Decisions and Avoid Business Disasters. Gleb immigrated to the US as a child from Moldova in eastern Europe. Since then, he's gone on to study cognitive biases, decision making and avoiding disasters, earning his PhD. With a background in cognitive neuroscience and behavioral economics, he has over 20 years of experience teaching, consulting, and coaching leaders to avoid business disasters. During our interview, Gleb shares some useful insights on why we make poor decisions, how to avoid business disasters, improve decision making skills and more, including: Favouring People Like Us When hiring or forming business partnerships, we tend to seek out and choose people who are similar to us. Whether we fall in love with their resume or their personality, these people may not be best for the organization. Alternatively, it's often people with different perspectives than us that can provide the most value. Tribalism Unfortunately, our decision making is adapted to the hunter gatherer environment and not the modern business environment. This means we're actively trying to climb the social hierarchy, and desperate not to fall from the top of it. As a result, our decision making process is naturally not as strong as it could be. 5 Questions to Avoid Decision Disasters Gleb explains the reasoning behind why you should ask yourself these 5 questions: What important information did I not yet consider? What dangerous judgement errors have I not yet addressed? What would a trusted and objective advisor do? How have I addressed all the ways the decision could fail? What new information would cause me to revisit this decision? For larger, more significant decisions, Gleb recommends an 8 step decision making model. This model can be worked through by yourself or with your entire team, and starts with the all important first step: Identify the need for a decision to be made. Get our FREE Strategic Planning Workbook template here: https://www.smestrategy.net/strategic-planning-process-template-workbook Enroll in our strategic planning course to learn our process for creating a strategic plan successfully (without hiring anyone): https://www.smestrategy.net/strategic-planning-steps-course Are you looking for someone to facilitate your strategic planning process? Book a complimentary consultation to learn more about our approach: https://www.smestrategy.net/contact Want a software to track & monitor your strategic plan? Get a free trial for Cascade Strategy: https://go.executestrategy.net/trial?fpr=smestrategy // WEBSITE & RESOURCES: Website ► https://www.smestrategy.net/ Blog ► https://www.smestrategy.net/blog Strategy & Leadership Podcast ►https://www.smestrategy.net/podcast Alignment Book ► https://www.smestrategy.net/alignment-book Contact ►https://www.smestrategy.net/contact // FOLLOW US ON SOCIAL MEDIA: Facebook ► https://www.facebook.com/Smestrategy/ LinkedIn ► https://www.linkedin.com/company/2866558 Instagram ► https://www.instagram.com/anthonyctaylor/ Twitter ►https://twitter.com/smeinsights // ABOUT SME STRATEGY CONSULTING: SME Strategy is a management consulting firm that specializes in helping organizations develop and implement their strategic plans. We work with teams to facilitate conversations about strategic direction and business strategy so that our clients can focus their energy on what will move them forward faster. Based out of Vancouver, BC, we've worked with organizations all over North American and beyond in various industries including nonprofits, universities & government organizations. To learn more about working with a facilitator: https://www.smestrategy.net/strategic-plan-creation