Executive Intelligence

Part Three: Common Errors of Business Judgment

The mind thrives on imperfect data. We can turn nonsense into sense because our brain has been designed for a world where a fast, plausible interpretation is often better than a slow, certain one. Yet the strength of this everyday intelligence carries with it an unexpected liability. The very way our minds have evolved to process information is often the root cause of the most common and most dangerous errors in business judgment. Cornell’s J. Edward Russo and Wharton’s Paul Schoemaker, in their book Winning Decisions, identified the most prevalent of these mistakes.¹¹ Each can be directly traced to the unique architecture and thought processes of the brain, whose Connectionist structure makes ...