People Decisions are the foundation of what makes an organization successful and that has been true and will be true in 2020 and beyond.  Take a look at  how people decisions are made and you will  find all kinds of problems (disguised as opportunities) that lead to less than desirable results.

Consider what we've seen in our experience and consider the research by Dr. Lazarus  on significant strategic Decision making pitfalls  and their implications on people decisions.

Emotions: It's proven that overall decision-making also follows its own 80/20 rule, 80% based on emotion and 20% logic ie. Emotions that drive these types of decisions center on concern for others, for your own future reputation, on job security and on guilt.   Consider the impact of this on hiring decisions.

Emphasis on time efficiency and the "accountability" issue:  In your job, you have day-to-day decisions for which you have direct accountability vs. hiring and development decisions for which you may have little accountability and for which there is little visibility in the short term.   So how are decisions OFTEN made with little accountability, think about it!

Relying too much on Memory:  Doing interviews, processing candidate information and having discussions but then several days down the road, participating in a decision making process- this just isn't effective given human nature and everything else going on…

Activity over accomplishment: Organizations often have a multitude of steps, reports, checkpoints for talent management processes, but they go through the motions without processing the information effectively or much at all but feel comfortable with the decision simply because they've gone through the effort of the steps…Going through the motions.

Underestimating risks: Decision-makers have great difficulty evaluating low probability, high risk events before disaster strikes, so they under-protect before and overprotect afterwards. Think about the impact on current and future hiring decisions…(To Be Continued)