There is something that happens in many meeting rooms and we rarely question.
The safest person in the room speaks, firmly believes, no doubt, closes his sentences as if they were inevitable conclusions and then something almost automatic happens.
The rest of the table assumes:
"You must be right..." Security has that power.
But a study that analyzed more than 70,000 decisions found something uncomfortable: Trust is not always connected with the ability to decide well; some people doubt even when they are right, others are completely convinced... even when they are wrong, and there appears one of the silent problems of many organizations.
When the wrong people are the safest, collective decisions get worse, but the risk grows even more when that security is accompanied by power, because when someone with power is wrong, it rarely stops there.
The opposite often happens.
It uses its experience, its authority, its position... to show that it is right, not necessarily for bad purpose, often for something deeply human: the desire to not seem wrong and, at that time, the organization enters into dangerous ground; doubts begin to disappear, the more prudent voices become silent, the contrary ideas cease to appear and, gradually, the decision ceases to be collective... It becomes the confirmation of power.
That's why the best decision makers often have something different; they don't necessarily speak louder, but they have something much more rare: a very clear understanding of the limits of their own knowledge, they know when to move forward and they know when to say something that in many companies is considered almost a weakness: "I'm not sure."
Curiously, that intellectual humility is often the foresight of the best decisions, because deciding well is not about looking safe, it's about understanding when you really are and, in an increasingly complex world, that difference...
It's worth more than any speech full of conviction.
