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There is currently a shift in businesses to sustainability. The pursuit of sustainability has given considerable attention to the triple bottom-line which is a balance of environment, social and corporate governance (ESG) issues. Organizations are increasingly understanding that effective management of sustainability has challenges and opportunities that can contribute directly to your financial success. Education in the workplace plays a vital role for success of sustainability in any organization.

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The 8 Traps of Decision Making

Before making an important decision, prudent managers evaluate the situations confronting them — and often fall into one of the eight traps of faulty thinking.
Researchers have identified a series of flaws in the way we think when making decisions. They are hardwired into our thinking process, so we often fail to recognize them.
While we cannot entirely rid ourselves of them, we can learn to understand the traps and compensate for them.
1.The Anchoring Trap
When considering a decision, the mind gives disproportionate weight to the first information it receives. Initial impressions, estimates or data anchor subsequent thoughts and judgments. In business, a common anchor is a past event or trend. While relying on such may lead to a reasonably accurate estimate of future numbers, it also tends to give too much weight to past events and not enough to other factors.
The Antidote
Anchors affect how virtually all professionals make decisions. No one can avoid their influence. But becoming aware of their dangers can reduce their impact:
•Always view a problem from different perspectives. Try using alternative starting points and approaches rather than sticking with your first line of thought.
•Think about the problem on your own before consulting others.
•Be open-minded. Seek opinions from a variety of people to widen your frame of reference.
•Avoid anchoring your advisers, consultants and others from whom you solicit information. Tell them as little as possible about your ideas and estimates. If you reveal too much, your preconceptions may simply come back to you.
2.The Status-Quo Trap
We are predisposed to perpetuating the status quo. Deep within our psyches, we are self-protective and risk-aversive.
The Antidote
Don’t maintain the status quo just because it’s comfortable. Do so only when it turns out to be the best choice.
•Remind yourself of your objectives. Examine how they would be served by the status quo.
•Never think of the status quo as your only alternative. Identify other options.
•Ask yourself: Would I choose the status quo if it weren’t so?
3.The Sunk-Cost Trap
We tend to make choices in ways that justify past decisions, even when the latter no longer seem valid. We know rationally that sunk costs are irrelevant to present decisions, but they nevertheless lead to inappropriate choices. This frequently occurs when we’re unwilling, consciously or not, to admit a mistake.
The Antidote
•Seek feedback from those who were uninvolved in the earlier decision.
•Examine why admitting a past mistake distresses you. Even the best and most experienced managers are not immune to errors in judgment.
•Be on the lookout for the influence of sunk-cost biases in subordinates’ decisions and recommendations.
•Don’t cultivate a failure-fearing culture that leads employees to perpetuate and cover up mistakes.
4.The Confirming-Evidence Trap
Leaders sometimes seek out information that supports their existing instinct or point of view, while avoiding information that contradicts it. This trap affects where we go to collect evidence, as well as how we interpret it.
The Antidote
Don’t necessarily disregard the choice to which you’re subconsciously drawn, but make sure it’s the smart one.
•Check whether you’re examining all evidence with equal rigor.
•Ask someone you respect to play devil’s advocate.
•Be honest with yourself about your motives. Are you really gathering information to help you make a smart choice—or are you looking for evidence that confirms what you already think and want to do?
•When seeking others’ advice, don’t ask leading questions that invite confirming evidence.
5.The Framing Trap
The first step in making a decision is to frame the question. It’s also one of the most dangerous; how you frame a problem can profoundly influence your choices.
The Antidote
Limit adverse effects by employing the following:
•Don’t automatically accept the initial frame, whether it was formulated by you or someone else. Always try to reframe the problem in various ways.
•Try posing problems in neutral ways that combine gains and losses or embrace different reference points.
•When others recommend decisions, examine the way they framed the problem. Challenge them with different frames.
The Estimating and Forecasting Traps
Meteorologists and bookies have opportunities and incentives to maintain records of their forecasting abilities. The rest of us seldom have enough carefully tracked data to adequately calibrate our minds to make reasonable estimates in the face of uncertainty. This sets us up for three more traps.
6.The Overconfidence Trap
Most of us are overconfident about our judgment abilities and prediction accuracy, as we remember our successes and quickly forget our errors. Our hubris tricks us into considering only a narrow range of possibilities.
Major initiatives and investments often hinge on estimate ranges. Managers who underestimate the high end (or overestimate the low end) of a crucial variable may miss attractive opportunities or expose themselves to far greater risk than ever imagined.
7.The Prudence Trap
When faced with high stakes, we tend to adjust our estimates or forecasts with prudence, “just to be on the safe side.” Too much prudence can be as dangerous as too little.
8.The “Recallability” Trap
Memories of dramatic events leave strong impressions on our minds and can skew future decision-making efforts.
The Antidote
Take a disciplined approach to forecasting.
•Start by considering the extremes: the low and high ends of possible value ranges. Then, challenge your estimates, as well as those of your subordinates and advisers.
•Always state your estimates honestly, and explain to anyone who will be using them that they have not been adjusted. Emphasize the need for frank input to anyone who will be supplying you with estimates. Test estimates over a reasonable range to assess their impact.
•Carefully examine all of your assumptions to ensure they’re not unduly influenced by your memory. Get actual statistics whenever possible, and avoid being guided by impressions.

Finding your passion

The road to happiness lies in two simple principles: find what it is that interests you and that you can do well, and when you find it put your whole soul into it - every bit of energy, ambition, and natural ability you have. ~ John D. Rockefeller III

The Power of Asking

You would be amazed at how many people do not ask for what they want. There is a simple method that needs to be followed so that you effectively use the power of asking to get what you want out of life. First, you must setup a specific set of strategic questions to determine the five W’s – what, when, why, who, where, and how. Second, ask someone with experience, knowledge, and expertise to guide you appropriately. You must determine the value that you create to the situation. Make it interesting for the party you are asking and you will dramatically increase your changes of getting a positive response. You must have 100% confidence in what you are asking for – you must have an absolute conviction of the value that you provide. You must continue to ask until you get what you want. You must be relentless and not give up until you get the answer that you are looking for. However, you must show flexibility where you might ask different people in a different manner with different values. You have to change and adjust until you achieve what you want. Never give up asking because the answer you are looking for is out there for you, every rejection brings you one step closer to the right answer.

How do you measure your success?

Recently through Education Day with Leadership Palm Beach County, I had the opportunity to meet Dr. Tammy Ferguson, principal of Village Academy. Dr. Ferguson shared with us what criteria that she uses to measure her success. As excerpted from First, Break all the Rules by Marcus Buckingham and Curt Coffman, we can measure the strength of a workplace or organization from the following:

• Do I know what is expected of me?

• Do I have the materials and equipment I need to do a good job?

• Do I have the opportunity to do what I do best every day?

• In the last seven days, have I received recognition or praise for doing good work?

• Does someone at your organization seem to care about me as a person?

• Is there someone at your organization who encourages my development?

• Do my opinions seem to count?

• Does the mission/purpose of my organization make me feel my job is important?

• Are my co-workers committed to doing quality work?

• Do I have a best friend at my organization?

• In the last six months, at my organization has someone talked to me about my progress?

• This last year, have I had the opportunity at my organization to learn and grow?

Four activities that I must do very well at my organization:

1. Select the right person
2. Set expectations
3. Motivate the person
4. Develop the person

Originally founded in 2000, Village Academy is the only Palm Beach County District K-10 School. Village Academy will graduate its first senior class in 2011. Dr. Ferguson knows the names of every student and provides the students with the necessary tools for them to go to college. Student enrollment is set at a maximum of 75 students per grade level so that they can preserve a small, nurturing learning environment for the students. Students at Village Academy do not think about whether they are going to college, it is about which one they will attend. Village Academy’s goal is that 100 percent of its students attend college and obtain Bright Futures Scholarships.

Understanding the needs of your customers

Companies can use the turn down in the economy to make their sales opperations not only less expensive but more effective. It is crucial to determine where cuts will hurt customer perception and adversely affect their buying behavior. It is important to understand the needs of your customers. Tthe economic value those needs represent require an analysis of more than gross margins. Now is the time to complete research on your customer buying behavior.

Understanding the value of business research:

The prime managerial value of business research is that it reduces uncertainty by providing information that improved the decision-making process. The decision-making process associated with the development and implementation of strategy involves four interrelated storages:

1. Identify problems or opportunities.
2. Diagnosing and assessing problems or opportunities.
3. Selecting and implementing a course of action.
4. Evaluating the course of action.


Business research supplies mangers with pertinent information that plays an important role by reducing the uncertainty in each of these stages. After an organization recognizes a problem or identifies a potential opportunity, an important aspect of research is the provision of diagnostic information that clarifies the situation. Determination for the need for research enters on time constraints, availability of data, nature of decision, and the value of the research information in relation to the cost.

Major topics for business reach centers around the following key areas:

* General Business Conditions

* Financial and Accounting

* Management and Organizational Behavior

* Sales and Marketing

* Information Systems

* Corporate Responsibility


Basically, research improves the quality of business decision. As business becomes increasingly global, it is important to understand the nature of foreign markets and determine whether you will require customized business strategies for global markets. Good research provides your organization with solid data that allows you to seize the opportunity.

How to ensure growth in a tough economy?

It is important that CEOs realize that a down economy is an opportunity. While I agree that all companies should manage their expense prudently, you cannot cut your way to prosperity. While focusing on costs, many companies inadvertently destroy their top-line, requiring them to put more pressure on the bottom-line which creates a spiral effect.

1. Planning – Have and work with a written business plan.
2. Core Customer – Identify who are your most profitable and loyal customer, and focus on those customers that will most likely buy your product or services in the quantity required for optimal profit.
3. Differentiate – make sure that your company has an uncommon offering that is targeted toward your core customer that your business will “own” and leverage.
4. Invest in your sales force – get rid of your “Turkeys” immediately. Invest whatever it takes to train and develop your “Eagles” to peak performance.
5. Improve the hiring process of the sales force – in our experience most companies do a very poor job in hiring salespeople. The assessment tools and interviewing processes they use produce poor success rates. This costs companies a lot of money on the top line.
6. Find top talent – evaluate every employee at least once a year. Get rid of your “C” players, and figure out which of your “B” players can be developed into “A” players.
7. Marketing – great public relations is what attracts potential business to your sales force.

If you grow the top-line while managing costs well then you will never have to worry about layoffs. Sign up for your free e-zine at www.globalstrategicmgmt.com that provides executives with essential strategic and organizational knowledge to help them make decisions.