KaiNexus Continuous Improvement Podcast — Better Decision Making: Avoiding the Conclusion Trap and Other Pitfalls

Presented by Dan Markovitz, author of The Conclusion Trap, hosted by Mark Graban of KaiNexus

Organizations (and individuals) frequently struggle to make good decisions. They spend money, invest in new technology, and invest enormous amounts of time and effort reorganizing in fruitless efforts to solve thorny problems. Why?

Years of training and reinforcement in school and at work, time pressures and deadlines, and inherent psychological biases cause us to jump to conclusions before we even understand the problem we’re attempting to solve.

This workshop will help you make better decisions by eliminating that tendency. You’ll learn a powerful, four-step process that ensures you will deeply understand a problem before pursuing any given solution:

(1) gathering both facts and data, so you can accurately grasp the situation

(2) framing the problem, so you can avoid cognitive biases

(3) isolating contributing factors, so you can manage complex situations

(4) finding the root cause, so you can avoid ineffective band-aids