At both of my ventures, Better and Netek, we operate by many key principles, one of them is avoiding stupidity; which is to avoid bad decisions. So instead of asking ourselves,”how do we make good decisions?; we ask: how do we avoid making bad ones?

The answer to this question is a healthy dose of humility. For example, when you come up with a theory, you want to falsify it as quickly as you can. So imagine you close a deal, you want to know as quickly as you can whether it’s a good or bad one.

For us, this means not being afraid of asking others to point out the flaws in our ideas and challenge each other. Everytime we have a discussion and debate we come up with a better answer than before.

For us, relying on one perspective is a fallacy.

Of course, this is not common because people are so protective of their ideas and get defensive about it. But when someone is pointing out the flaws you need to thank them. For example, what if you based your career on that decision, on a faulty proposition, and they let you do it; they’re not your friends, they’re your worst enemy.

For us, this is part of our decision making process; which is based on avoiding our own biases. We believe in balancing optimism with critical thinking by considering other perspectives; specifically how everything could go wrong.

Bottom line: Your decision making process should embrace critical thinking to avoid your own biases.

How do you avoid making bad decisions?