#403 – March 16, 2025 [6 Minute Read]
Blind Spots and Decision-Making Pitfalls
In periods of change and chaos, it’s a good time to reflect on our blind spots and decision-making pitfalls. Here are some insights, frameworks and check-ins to help you achieve greater success with your strategies.
Quick Takes:
Common Causes of Bad Decisions:
Here’s a helpful list to doublecheck your thinking. Shane Parrish, writing in his Farnam Street Brain Food newsletter, invites us to consider these five decision-making pitfalls:
- Not asking, “and then what?” (consider the indirect and downstream consequences of a decision).
- Ignoring or missing large trends (check your blind spots or comfort with the status quo).
- Assumptions based on small sample sizes (or memorable anecdotes).
- Giving undue weight to external expectations, group think, or the opinions of authority figures.
- Wanting the world to work the way we would like rather than the way it does.
On Changing Patterns: Insights from the Beehive
Bees collaborate, working in harmony to ensure hive success through methods of adaptation notable for their effective group dynamics and collective intelligence. What can we learn from them?
In The Hive Mind at Work, Australian consultant Siobhán McHale notes we can find change elusive because ecosystems (like bee hives) don’t easily reveal their patterns. Systems can be like spider webs — you can pull on one or several threads of the web but it’s not enough to move forward: you still struggle in the trap.
“Successful change leaders know that you do not get where you want to go by changing people. You get there by changing patterns”, she says. The first step is to map your ecosystem for its patterns, then plan smart, intentional interventions. Reactive patterns of behaviour, for example, must be identified and replaced with proactive, forward-looking patterns.
Bee hives demonstrate four other key qualities worth reviewing: hard work, teamwork, role clarity, and resilience.
Ways to See Your Blind Spots
Writing on Inc.om, Moshe Engelberg identifies seven ways to expose your blind spots:
- Assess discrepancies: Reflect on things others tell you they see in you that you don’t see in yourself.
- Engage a coach: An experienced partner can help you uncover and address your leadership blind spots.
- Look in the mirror – literally: Observe your facial expressions and tone of voice as you run through some challenging conversations.
- Analyze past decisions, especially those that did not yield the outcomes you expected. Look for patterns in your decision-making where you made up stories.
- Ask the magic question: “What am I missing?” Be sure to make it safe for your people to tell you the truth.
- Really listen: Pay attention to feedback and cues from others to find blind spots.
- Practice mindfulness: Dedicate 10 minutes daily to mindfulness meditation, focusing on increasing your self-awareness and emotional intelligence.
Checklist:
Where Your Marketing Visuals May Be Off-Track
If you need to produce more effective visual content (e.g. for presentations, reports, your website or social media), consider this checklist of 10 tips from Column Five (the full infographic is here).
- Colour: Colour should be used sparingly to highlight important information. Use no more than five colours in a single layout.
- Typography: All fonts should be legible and appropriate for your communication style.
- Layout: Align visual elements and present content in a way that guides readers through a logical visual hierarchy.
- Space: Maintain ample white space. Messaging becomes cluttered and incoherent when there’s too much information.
- Illustration: Include illustration only if it enhances the content, matching the tone and subject matter.
- Icons: They should be simple, easy to understand and universal, never a distraction.
- Data: Don’t overwhelm the reader with multiple graphs when one combining the key data points will suffice. And in data visualizations, make sure items are appropriately sized to keep the eye from skewing your perception of what they represent.
- Simplicity: Avoid unnecessary design, including 3D charts, ornamental illustration, or extraneous elements. Minimal design can be effective so long as you have a strong story.
For Your Reading List:
Say What They Can’t Unhear: The 9 Principles of Lasting Change by Tamsen Webster. Change isn’t an easy sell. You need to give your audience a reason to believe. This compact and actionable guide explores nine “persuasion proverbs” — for example: Change isn’t just an action, it’s a reaction. Pain is the enemy of long-term change. When two truths fight, only one wins. Identity is the greatest influencer.
Closing Thought:
“Those who can tolerate the most uncertainty are the ones who will eventually win.“