Worst Decision-Making: Myth Versus Reality

The seeds of decision-making success or failure are planted years before we witness the climactic result.  Four common CEO archetypes are at risk of getting their decision wrong when it will matter most. 

There is a myth that there are singular moments of brilliance or failure in CEO decision-making.  It is the climactic high point in the stories we tell and movies we watch. More often than not, it is a myth. The reality is the seeds of poor decision-making are most often planted years before the climactic high point of the story.   

Chris Mailander, author of Judgment: The Art of Momentous Decision-Making (Ironheart Publishing, available on Amazon), describes four CEO archetypes at risk of poor decision-making, and the indicators which tell us why: 

1. The FOMO CEO. This CEO sees their peers achieving great success with their businesses.  They see the phenomenal exit which personally enriches the peer CEO and company shareholders; the successful recapitalization or financing of the company; or the launch of a brilliant new product or service receiving accolades from the public.  The FOMO CEO wants to achieve the same. Most often, however, they have not prepared for the journey. They have constructed decision processes customized to the outcome. Their team is not ready to undertake the path. They have not built out a gameplan and the playbook for getting there. They want to play in the biggest game, but haven’t yet risen to the level of competition it demands.  
   
   
2. The Frustrated CEO.  This CEO expresses frustration with their team. They feel the team, while they have been good at accomplishing successes to date, does not have the capabilities or domain competencies to achieve the next higher level of success.  Below the waterline, what often is going on is that the legacy decision-making process makes the CEO the final arbiter of all or too many decisions.  The team reporting to the CEO have conditioned their contributions to the decision process to cater to the CEO’s own predispositions and tendencies, for better or worse.  To achieve the next higher level of success will require mastering new domains, thinking about problem-solving in new ways, and increasing the capacity of the organization to take on new challenges.  It is the decision process which needs to be redesigned in order to achieve the next higher level of success. 
   
   
3. The Bored CEO.  The bored CEO was most alive when they were shepherding the company through years of challenge. Now that the company is successful, the CEO doesn’t feel that same sense of vitality. They grow board. When they grow bored, they grow distracted, taking on new pursuits and hobbies in search of something that can reignite the feeling of vitality. This CEO needs new challenges which reengage them in the company at a deeper level. 
   
   
4. The Successful CEO. This CEO has been brilliantly successful quarter-over-quarter and year-over-year. They have developed a decision architecture for the company which has been perfected to achieve success and longevity. The challenge emerges when there is a shift in the situational context. The variables in their decision-making change, but their processes do not. It exposes vulnerabilities. These highfliers do make the newspapers, as their climactic downfall causes a splash. They were unprepared.