Bad decision? You’re not alone, but let’s try to avoid making the same mistake again…
Published on 23 May 2024 • Written by Dr Lisa Colledge
Do you sometimes wonder why bad decisions ever got made? Especially when evidence was available that suggested pretty clearly that it was, in fact, a bad decision?
The reason is that most people are not very good at making objective decisions. I’m sorry, but that’s just how it is.
But never fear. People have such diversity in the way their brains work, that a specialist brain-type can always be found. The trick to having these decision saviors around in your organization is to make sure that your culture is designed in a way that attracts them, while also enabling them to work their magic.
Key take aways
Most people don’t make decisions rationally. Reading that, it’s likely you feed irritated, or upset, or offended. Or you think I’m wrong and stupid and are about to stop reading. Which is proof of a kind of my point. I am stating a scientifically proven fact. It’s not personal.
There is one type of brain which is unsurpassed at objective decision-making. It doesn’t get distracted by irrelevant information. It doesn’t fall prey to our tendency to prefer to pay attention to positive information, and to pass over negative information. That amazing type of brain is autistic.
Autistic team members increase your team’s success by their superior focus on data and ability to use it rationally to make decisions. But this specialization comes at a cost, such as struggling to understand social cues. If you want to have an autist-attracting-and-enabling culture, your best bet is to get ahead and create it in anticipation, instead of waiting until you have an important decision to make and then trying to change things (too late!).
—-
Most people are easily distracted from focusing on information, and selective in which information they use to make decisions.
You’re probably thinking, “Most people, but not me. I can focus! And my decisions are always based on all the evidence I can lay my hands on. I just never have all of the data I need! OK, sometimes I play a hunch, but I’ve been doing this for years, so my hunch is always based on education and experience. We’re fine. We’ve got this covered.”
Please don’t feel insulted. Take a breath. Irrational decision making is just the way most of our brains work. You have other strengths. We are not all good at everything.
But please ask yourself.
Even if your organization’s decision making is OK, can it be even better?
Can you build your team’s confidence a decision represents the best decision based on all data available, to get everyone’s work pointing in the same direction?
The answer to both these questions is — yes, you can.
One more question: how valuable would it be to your team’s motivation and success to know that you could call on superior skills in decision making?
You’ll have to answer that question yourself (although I have a hunch).
There is a type of brain that is unsurpassed at focus and objective decision-making. The autistic brain is incredible at this. Yes, there are things it is not very good at, just like every other brain in the world, but focus and objective decision-making? Rest easy, autists have this covered.
I’m going to share some research that underpins what I am saying, because I am an evidence-based lover-of-data, both numerical and anecdotal, and I don’t make big statements like this without foundation. But before I do, I’m going to talk about the opportunity this offers to your organization, and how you can take a step in the right direction to take advantage of your opportunity.
I want this incredible focus and objective decision making in my organization. How do I get it?
Autists are highly specialized in focus and objectivity. Of course, some allists (I just learnt this word — it means “non-autists”) have these skills as well: this is why you think, “We’re fine. We’ve got this covered”. Some of these allists may just not know they are autistic; some are genuinely allists. It doesn’t really matter. But you will greatly increase the chances that your organization excels in these business-critical skills if your organization attracts and enables people whose brains contain these autistic traits.
Autists’ amazingness in focus and objectivity comes at a cost. One brain can’t do everything, which is why evolution has made different people specialize in different things. Autists tend to struggle, for example, to understand social interaction like small talk and body language (learn more in this article); they can do it, but it’s hard work, and that is work that is not going into the focus and objectivity. If you want full focus and objectivity (you do!), then you need to remove unnecessary brain exhaustion, such as by stopping surprising people with agendas only when they are in the meeting, and insisting the camera is turned on.
An autist-attracting-and-enabling culture is not one that happens overnight, and it is not one that you can turn on because you have a critical decision to make tomorrow.
An autist-attracting-and-enabling culture is one, however, that you can create in anticipation of these critical decisions. You know they’re coming, so it is best to get ready to welcome these brilliant brains.
The best thing? These kinds of teams are better places for allists to work in as well: everyone benefits.
How do you get started? Let’s have a chat and see what would work for you. No obligation, you’ve nothing to lose except half an hour, and so much to gain!
Extra bonus: if you lead with your culture, instead of leading with poor autists who need to struggle in your organization until your culture catches up, you don’t depend on people being willing to share their autism. You don’t even depend on people knowing they’re autistic. You will simply know that you are ahead of the game because you have used the needs of autists to build a best-in-class, engaging culture where you max out the chance that everyone is contributing at the top of their games.
Accuracy footnote: you almost certainly have autists in your organization already, whether you know it or not. They are probably not working at the top of their game because a lot of their energy is drained into agenda-free meetings with their videos on. They will be very happy if you start off on this route, and you won’t have to wait for long before they can contribute more of their skills!
How do you know that autists are great at focusing?
Professor Nilli Lavie researches attention. She has shown that we have a limited amount of visual attention, and it can be exhausted. Doing something more complicated exhausts it more quickly. And ignoring irrelevant distractions also exhausts it more quickly.
Her team compared how quickly autists and allists exhausted their attention. They tested this by asking participants to indicate whether they saw an X or an N inside a circle with five other letters in it, and also to look for a grey squiggle outside the ring that was only there half the time.
Autists and allists did as well as each other when 2 of the other letters were similar to an X or N, and the others were Os. Above 2 letters, allists were significantly less accurate at detecting the grey squiggle. More easily distracted and exhausted.
The most challenging, exhausting test made absolutely no difference to the focus of autists.
What evidence is there that autists are more rational in decision making?
People typically process information irrationally, with bias, based on how it is presented. Autists are more resistant to this kind of bias.
Here is one example from a review article that I really enjoyed:
Allists struggle to detach their decisions from what has gone before. Their objectivity is reduced by thinking about non-recoverable money, time, and effort that has already been sunk into a project.
Rationally, being non-recoverable means that this information is irrelevant in the decision you have to make now. But it’s difficult to leave this sunk cost behind.
Autists’ decisions are not influenced by this Sunk Cost Bias.
And a second example:
Would you rather keep $30 of $50, or lose $20 of $50?
Would you rather eat 20% fat-containing or 80% fat-free crisps?
Most people choose to keep $30, or eat 80% fat-free crisps, although logically you’d expect responses to be split 50:50 because in each case there is only one option.
We are susceptible to this Framing Effect, with twice as many people favouring a fact framed positively to the identical option framed negatively.
Most people, but not autists. Here only you see the 50:50 split.
The article contains many more examples, but you get the idea.
To conclude
Every skill can be expressed in a positive or negative way. Whether we view it positively or negatively depends on the environment that the skill is in.
Rationality might not always be viewed positively in a social situation, but put it in a room with a difficult decision to be made, and the perspective changes.
Our job is to match skills to situation, while ensuring we provide the right environment for the skills to be able to flourish.
References
Anna M. Remington, John G. Swettenham and Nilli Lavie (2012) ‘Lightening the Load: Perceptual Load Impairs Visual Detection in Typical Adults but Not in Autism’, Journal of Abnormal Psychology 121(2), pp. 544–551.
Liron Rozenkrantz, Anila D’Mello and John Gabrieli (2012) ‘Enhanced rationality in autism spectrum disorder’, Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 25(8), pp. 685–696.
I'm Lisa, and I help leaders create inclusive cultures that embrace all neurostyles. By empowering every team member to contribute at their best, while fostering mental well-being, you will boost innovation, retention, and talent acquisition—leading to enhanced business performance.
Click here to learn more about how my services can transform your team.
