Decision making for dummies... er, managers

Getting close to the end of another term, another book finished. This was "Judgment in Managerial Decision Making" but it sounds much worse than it really is. It was actually quite interesting, gave me some insight into some of the questionable decisions made by supervisors and coworkers over the years.

(Because I would never made questionable decisions and my judgment is always spot on.)

(Hey, it's my blog.)

But in all seriousness, it made me think about some of the biases that I'm guilty of - most without even knowing it. Ease of recall, retrievability, misconceptions of chance, anchoring - they're all biases that until this class I didn't even realize existed - except that I was applying them to decisions in my personal and (semi) professional life. One area that I know I'm guilty of, and actively work to downplay, is bounded awareness. I've always had trouble seeing the forest for the trees - and the theory of bounded awareness explains why.

I'd like to think that more people are aware of these types of biases but I don't think that's the case, Like I said, having read the book, I have a better grasp on some of my previous supervisors and their thought processes. Where before I just assumed they were jerks, now I can see that they were jerks that had fallen prey to normally ineffective and inefficient managerial cognitive processes.

(I jest.)

(Except for that one guy. He was a jerk.)