The Business Trendsetter Podcast

Why Most People Are Wrong Most of the Time

Episode Summary

Why many business leaders make poor decisions by relying on the mainstream media instead of data and trends.

Episode Notes

This podcast explains why so many of us make poor business decisions.  Quite simply, we tend to look backward rather than forward.  We think the future will look like the past, when that is mostly unlikely.  We let biases built up over time, and perceptions of today (which are often wrong) drive decisions - instead of data and trends.

Good leaders hire good coaches to help them understand the marketplace and how it shifts, in order to plan for a future different from the past.  As coaches we use data and trends to drive better investments with better outcomes.  This podcast overviews, with facts, that the perceptions most people have about today are actually wrong.  Not a little off, but spectacularly wrong.  Most business leaders either don’t have the real data, or don’t access available data, to understand today – so it is impossible to accurately create future scenarios.  This podcast goes into some depth about just how bad “common perception” is.  In fact, most of the time what people think is happening is “common myth” rather than reality.  That’s why good leaders hire good coaches, just like good athletes have good coaches.

Thinking Points:

• Do you have an external data gathering system in order to understand your market and customers and how both will change?
• Do you use emerging trends to drive investments, or your historical “always done it that way”?
• Do you seek external data, and external experts, when making decisions or do you rely on the most common understanding of the crowd?
• Do you recognize your need for external inputs when making decisions, and your need for an external coach, or do you let your bias drive you to make your own decision based on your  history?