Why Do We Justify Bad Decisions

Our lives are filled with decisions from the moment we wake up each day. We try and ease the lift on our brain by making some decisions part of a routine. Wake up, brush teeth, do yoga, drink coffee, etc but once you get past your routine the decisions start coming in big and small. What to wear today? What to eat? Who to call?

Of course with so many decisions we are bound to get our fair share of those decisions wrong. In fact, I would argue that in business the absence of failed decisions actually speaks to a broader issue of being too conservative around innovation. You should be trying enough new things in business and in life that some of them don't work out. If all your decisions work out 100% of the time you are being too conservative in your criteria for green lighting ideas. So though I am advocate of promoting ideas which on occasion will lead you to make bad decisions. I realize the only way to make sure this doesn't lead to calamity is having an ability and willingness to bail on a bad idea as soon as you have new information that it was wrong.

Sounds pretty straightforward, but then ask yourself why it is so common for people to stick with bad decisions, foolish beliefs or justify hurtful acts? It's because of something called Dissonance. Dissonance is inconsistency between the beliefs one holds or between one's actions and one's beliefs.

Let's say you see yourself as an honest person, but at the same time you are stealing supplies from work. The fact that you see yourself as honest doesn't reconcile with the fact that you are walking out with staplers and hole punchers every week, but the mere fact that both things exist creates Dissonance in your mind. Dissonance is uncomfortable. It literally makes you feel tired, your head hurts, it could even make you nauseous.

Your brain is constantly cycling on the issue of trying to justify these two competing thoughts at the same time, so your brain steps in subconsciously to ease the dissonance.

"This really isn't stealing. I have to do work at home and why should I pay for a stapler", "This stapler is nothing compared to how much they underpay me", "Last year I had hundreds of dollars in legitimate expenses that weren't reimbursed. I never complained so no one should complain about me taking home a few dozen pens".

If you can justify your stealing then suddenly you aren't stealing at all. You are merely striking a blow against the man who has been holding you down and newsflash you can keep right on believing you are an honest person with no pesky Dissonance to interrupt.

Of course this is a rather benign example but society gives us so many more serious examples. Prosecutors regularly fight against incarcerated people appealing convictions on the basis of new DNA evidence. In fact, once DNA evidence establishes the defendant couldn't have been at the scene its a common occurrence for the prosecutor to reimagine a new crime scene scenario where a unknown accomplice assist the currently condemned person in committing this crime. The best example of this is a footnote in the work done by the Innocence Project, which has freed 202 people by DNA, of all the people freed in only a handful of cases is there any effort at all to find the actual perpetrator of the crime. In nearly every case the Dissonance created by the idea that we as a society do on occasion convict a completely innocent person is so great that rather than press forward in search of another conviction we just wrap up the case in any many cases just continue with our pre DNA belief that the person probably was guilty of at least something.

This is the power of Dissonance. It's important to recognize its power in your brain and constantly interrogate your own thoughts for moments of self rationalization or justification. This is a critical skill because no business can afford to be so conservative in their decision making that the occasional bad idea does not get into production, but no leader can afford to be so driven by dissonance that you can't retreat from your own idea as new information is made available to you.

Businesses don't fail because someone tried a bad strategy that didn't work out. They fail because long after it was clear that the strategy wasn't working the Dissonance created by the belief that a leader is smart and the leader's idea is bad forces people to think that leader's idea must be a good one. This is one of the reasons why organizations will occasionally shuffle the deck to bring in a brand new leader from the outside. One of the best tools in a new leader's toolkit is they feel no Dissonance associated with recognizing current strategies are poor, because they weren't involved in creating the strategy initially.

You don't have to wait for a new leader to come in and re-evaluate your strategic approach. You can dig into your decisions on processes, products and people on your own. When you uncover something that makes you feel uncomfortable, like the employee you thought was the lowest ranked is actually turning out the best work, lean into that uncomfortable feeling. Don't justify your previous ranking. Take in the new information and then truly reconsider your previous decision to rank this employee poorly.

Listen for the language of your brain dealing with Dissonance:

• I deserve this
• I'm still right, but for a different reason now
• What they don't know won't hurt them
• I'm not hurting anyone
• It's no one else's business but mine
• She/He deserves it

This isn't just about being Data Driven. It's more than merely following data. Data itself can be used to justify previously held beliefs and in our Dissonant state we do a good job of only accepting data that backs our argument while ignoring the rest. This is more than following the data, this is getting inside your own head and recognizing the uncomfortable feeling being brought on by Dissonance and then consciously solving it instead of leaving it to your subconscious.

Learn how to master the skill of consciously overcoming Dissonance and you will be able to ensure your bad decisions turn into learnings instead of merely losses.