Decision Making Under Adversity

Article and picture from AusIMM

Learning how the brain interprets and processes stressful situations can help the decision-making process in high-pressure environments

We initially became interested in decision-making as a topic because of insights and evidence from the gender diversity debate. Organisations with both women and men on the leadership team in relatively equal numbers perform better on a range of measures including profitability, productivity, risk, customer satisfaction and staff engagement. And the reasons why? Researchers put it down to better decision-making:

  • ‘companies with strong female leadership deliver a 36 per cent higher return on equity, according to the index provider MSCI’ (World Economic Forum, 2015)
  • ‘companies ranked in the bottom quarter in terms of gender diversity on their boards were hit by 24 per cent more governance-related controversies than average’ (World Economic Forum, 2015).

However, women are frequently criticised for their decision-making. They’re allegedly slower at making decisions, wanting more evidence and are more risk averse. This is seen as a negative by organisations that are used to more masculine models of leadership.

....... This is an excerpt from the Minerals Institute monthly publication in which I feature in conjunction with Amanda Blesing in the October 2016 edition.

Read the full article here

Russell Boon#decision-making, #decision, #mining, #adversity, #pressure, #indecision, #emergency, #procrastination, #management, #leadershp, #equality, #genderComment