Soapbox – Traps
I invite you to cut out and keep this small piece and refer to it whenever you are in a business situation where you are amazed by the inadequacies of a person or organisation. More often than not, they are falling into one or more of these 11 traps:
1. Paralysis by analysis trap – discussion at the expense of action
2. The knowing-doing trap – failing to execute the decision
3. The ignorance and complacency trap – resulting from a culture of blame, low responsibility, bad delegation and/or poor communication
4. The anchor trap – giving disproportionate weight to the first piece of information received, colouring the remaining data, regardless of its relative importance
5. The status quo trap – maintaining the current situation and not venturing out of our comfort zone
6. The sunk-cost trap – repeating past mistakes
7. The confirming evidence trap – seeking and biasing information to justify an existing decision and to discount opposing information
8. The over-confidence trap – overestimating the accuracy of our forecasts
9. The framing trap – when a problem or situation is incorrectly stated
10. The recent event trap – giving undue weight to a recent event (similar to the anchor trap)
11. The prudence trap – being over-cautious and risk averse (similar to the status quo trap)
Enjoy finding the culprits of the above, see if you can find antidotes and finally, if at all possible, avoid falling into them yourself!
