10 reasons why good managers sometimes make bad decisions

MOOSINNING, Germany–There are 10 reasons why good managers sometimes make bad decisions, according to one analysis.

Not surprisingly, the report by GreatWorkLife.com notes, when an otherwise competent manager starts making bad decisions, it can impact their team and the broader organization.

Among those 10 reasons:

Inexperience in Life or Leadership

 “A young manager just starting on their career in management might simply not have enough business and life experience to make a high percentage of good decisions,” GreatWorkLife.com observed. “Often a mistake of young managers is to say ‘Yes’ to everything, which can lead to an over-burdening of the team. While saying ‘No’ to many requests may lead others to perceive the manager in a negative light. Always saying Yes without question and without prioritizing the requests can lead to overworking your team, forcing poor decision-making further down the line.”

Moreover, inexperience in leading people on a personal level can also lead to bad decisions. “A younger manager that manages more mature workers can run into conflict if they do not show the required levels of self-confidence to stick to their decisions and follow them through. If the young manager is not committed to their decisions, they cannot expect their older team members to follow through either.”
Personal Life Pressures

Although it is unprofessional to let your personal life interfere with your professional life, it happens all too often, observed GreatWorkLife.com. “Consider a manager that is going through a painful split with their partner, discovers that a team member has started dating another co-worker. The manager stages an intervention with the two employees and stresses that workplace romances are not acceptable in the company.”

Time Pressure 

The life of a manager is often one of being under constant time pressure. For example:

• You need to deliver a sales number by the end of the month
• You need to present your status report at the senior manager’s weekly team meeting
• You need to stay late to complete your presentations for the next day
• You need to interview ten candidates for an open position
• You need to formulate a detailed business case for investment in a new product or service

“The role of a manager can be exciting and challenging, but the package comes with time pressure,” the report stated. “If your manager is overwhelmed, they may not be able to dedicate enough time to consider important decisions adequately.”

Stress & Overwork

Due to time pressure and overwhelming demands on the team, your manager may well be under stress, GreatWorkLife.com reminded.

“Often decisions made under the conditions of stress and overwork are not good decisions. Many companies now promote a work/life balance. But while they promote it, most management teams do not actually support it. You get promoted by delivering results, not having a good work/life balance. If you, as a manager, can achieve both, you will have a better decision-making track record.”

Senior Leadership Pressure

If you have not been a manager, you may not appreciate that managers are under constant pressure from above, the report pointed out.

“If you have a great manager, they will protect you from external pressures so that you can perform.”

According to GreatWorkLife.com, common senior leadership pressures that lead to poor decision making include:

• Forcing continual cost reductions even though the business is growing
• Enforcing a “Fire the underperforming employees” policy
• Inflating targets to unachievable levels to force an over performance situation
• Pushing a policy of continual workforce downsizing. Even though your company meets its revenue, sales, and profit targets, leadership is still reducing the workforce by 10% per year.
• Constantly reorganizing the company between functional hierarchy (Sales, Product Development, Operations) or business unit hierarchy (Product A, Product B, Product C).

“Most senior leaders do not understand the company well enough to optimize the organizational structures, yet they will constantly reorganize to attempt to prove they are doing something of value,” the analysis stated. “These pressures exert a huge burden on managers, which can lead to poor decision-making.”

Pressure from Individual Team Members

“Some teams have larger-than-life characters that perform important roles and have undue influence within the team,” GreatWorkLife.com pointed out. “ This is a real-life example from my early career. I took a freelance I.T. contract with a large pharmaceutical company. I was 23 years old, and the contract was more money than I could have dreamed of as someone fairly fresh out of university. There was a guy in the team; let’s call him Dave. Dave was a tough lad, physically, mentally, and personally; he did not suffer fools gladly and was crushing if any “Newbie” made a mistake. Even his manager was scared of him. The team was effectively being run by Dave, and it did not help the manager that Dave was also one of the most talented IT guys in the company.

“This placed the manager in an awkward position of deference to Dave’s wishes. If you, as a manager, are in this position of managing a tyrant, you either need to befriend and coach them into better work practices or develop someone to take over their work and let them go.”

No Clear Personal Values

As a manager, you need to have a clearly defined set of personal values; these values will enable you to make better business and team decisions, the report stated, pointing to what it called the FATHER Principles:

Fairness: The principle of fairness is core to the way we humans interact and expect to be treated. By default, we expect to be treated fairly and strive to treat others fairly. As a leader, you should always treat your team, tribe, or followers fairly.

Accountability: Being accountable for bad decisions or mistakes shows your moral fiber. We all make mistakes, but also many of us will not admit our mistakes and move on. Accepting accountability shows you are a strong, well-rounded leader with a character that people will respect and follow.

Trust: Great relationships and great teams are built on trust. Your team, your family, and your friendships rely on trust to grow and develop meaning. All high-performing teams, whether in the military, football teams, or teams within your company, will have a strong foundation when built on trust.

Honesty: Being able to discuss openly and honestly important issues with those around you is key to the integrity of our relationships. Honesty feeds into trust directly. If you cannot be honest with someone, it means you cannot trust them to hear the truth.

Equality: The principle of equality is core to our global human survival and happiness. There are so many inequities in the world, based largely on the fact that people love to discriminate against others for so many reasons.

Respect: The meaning of respect is to show regard for the wishes, feelings, and rights of others. You may not agree with the feelings or wishes of other people, but you need to respect that they have those feelings. You need to be able to appreciate that someone is the way they are for a reason. A true understanding of humanity means you will learn to respect the differences in us all. You may not agree with those differences, but you need to ability to consider why those differences exist.

No Solid Decision-Making Process

To keep it simple, there are two major theories/considerations in ethics that are said to compete, duty and utilitarianism, according to GreatWorkLife.com.

“The duty-based approach establishes right or wrong based on a list of rules such as the biblical rule ‘Thou shalt not kill.’ If you break the rule, you are in breach. Most company codes of conduct are duty-based,” GreatWorkLife.com stated. “The utilitarian approach judges a decision to be right or wrong based on the consequences of ‘the greatest good or the least pain.’”

Ego & Power

The age-old phrase “power corrupts” is as true as it is timeless, GreatWorkLife.com stated.

“While a leader might not have a lot of influence in the world, they certainly wield power over their sub-ordinates. A manager without a solid foundation of meaningful values will start to make poor decisions when they feel they are in a position of power. When a manager exudes the aura of being able to walk on water, it will coincide with poor decision-making.”

Lack of Balance Between Emotion & Logic

“We, humans, are both logical and emotional animals,” the analysis observed. “Yet, in some areas of our life, we let emotion control our decision-making. For example, when it comes to the choice of partner or choices of friends, we are often, if not entirely, driven by emotion. A well-balanced manager should be able to make good logical choices that also sit well with them emotionally. Overly cold and calculating business decision making without consideration for the human aspects and impact of the decision will not be balanced. Moreover, an overly emotional decision that makes no logical sense is equally destructive.”

Why You Might Think A Management Decision Was Bad: Hindsight Bias

:As explained in scientific research into managerial decision making the hindsight bias,” GreatWorkLife.com explained. “This occurs when people look back on their own judgments and those of others. We typically are not very good at recalling or reconstructing the way an uncertain situation appeared to us before finding out the results of the decision. As Max Bazerman puts it: In general, individuals should be judged by the process and logic of their decisions, not just on their results. A decision-maker who makes a high-quality decision that does not work out should be rewarded, not punished. Why? Because results are affected by a variety of factors outside the direct control of the decision-maker. When the hindsight bias leads our knowledge of the result to color our evaluation of the decision maker’s logic, we will make poorer evaluations than we would otherwise.”