“Reasoning is biased in favor of the reasoner.”

David McRaney dropped that gem in How Minds Change: The Surprising Science of Belief, Opinion, and Persuasion, and it’s one of those lines that just won’t leave me alone. It’s clever, sure. But it also nails something fundamentally true about how humans think—and why we’re better off thinking together.

When we reason on our own, our brains aren’t wired for objectivity. They’re wired for advocacy. We argue for our own perspectives with built-in bias and barely notice we’re doing it. 

Our brains are also lazy. Or, to be more charitable, efficient. Reasoning takes effort. So we delegate that cognitive load to others. It’s why the best thinking happens in groups—especially diverse groups—where we can distribute the mental workload, challenge each other’s assumptions, and sharpen each other’s thinking.

We tend to see agreement as a sign of harmony, alignment, and efficient decision-making.

But when every head nods in unison, I actually get a little nervous. Either we haven’t pushed hard enough—or someone doesn’t feel safe enough to speak up.

Consensus can feel like progress. But it often signals complacency.

I’ve seen it play out over and over. A leader floats an idea. Heads nod. The meeting ends five minutes early. Victory lap, right?

Not really. That’s usually a sign we’re either solving the wrong problem or we’ve just endorsed a half-baked solution. Because if a decision is meaningful, it should spark curiosity, resistance, even discomfort.

Have you ever been in a meeting where every voice seemed to clash, ideas spiraled in circles, and no clear decisions emerged? Frustrating, isn’t it? I’ve been in more of those than I care to remember.

Dr. Edward de Bono’s Six Thinking Hats method is here to save the day. Developed in 1985, this simple yet powerful framework transforms chaotic discussions into structured, focused collaboration. By guiding teams to explore every angle of a problem systematically, it fosters open dialogue, minimizes defensiveness, and ensures every perspective is heard—without letting egos derail the process. Doesn’t that sound nice?

Imagine if every decision you made could make or break your company's future. Every day, employees at all levels are bombarded with decisions that shape the organization's trajectory. Each choice, no matter how seemingly small, has a ripple effect. Are your decisions propelling your company forward, or are they holding you back?

According to McKinsey, companies make tens of thousands of decisions daily, yet only 20% of them are considered high-quality decisions. How can we ensure our decisions are among the high-quality ones? Executing a strategy involves navigating a sea of choices, big and small. Leaders can’t possibly oversee all of them. In fact, most decisions happen far from the executive suite, carried out by people on the front lines. As Matt O’Connell, CEO of Vistaly, told me, “On the ground, it’s the day-to-day, nitty-gritty stuff where you need to make quick decisions. The executives don’t care about the details—they just want the problem solved.”

Making good decisions quickly is critical, but it’s not easy. Decision-making is influenced by a number of factors—ranging from cognitive biases to stress and emotional pressures—that can cloud judgment and lead to inconsistent or rushed choices.