leadership Archives | Disaster Avoidance Experts

Startup founders can defeat mental health challenges and avoid burnout by paying attention to their mental health, seeking help, and standing up to pressure from major investors and Board members

Because we usually feel that everything is going to go according to plan, we don’t pay nearly enough attention to potential problems and fail to account for them in our plans. This problem is called planning fallacy.

Using the three social intelligence methods during a stakeholder meeting will help you learn the truth about your stakeholders’ needs, which will empower you to solve their problems and foster stronger relationships with them.

Asking the 8 Powerful Questions during a pre-engagement stakeholder assessment will lead to better engagement and stronger relationships with your stakeholders.

Official guidelines for COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic preparation assume a wildly optimistic scenario due to dangerous judgment errors known as cognitive biases. You need to instead prepare for a realistic pessimistic scenario.

If you care about your bottom line, hire women over men. Due to gender discrimination, women had to work harder to get the same career position as men, and you will on average get a better worker if you hire a woman.

Our feelings drive us to avoid short-term losses, which often results in us failing to take worthwhile risks and actually losing more in the long term. This problem comes from a dangerous judgment error called loss aversion.

Our brains cause us to drastically underestimate both the likelihood of a disaster occurring and the impact if it does. To address this dangerous judgment error known as the normalcy bias, we need to go far beyond our intuitions in planning for catastrophes.

Organizations often fail to train newly-promoted leaders well, because experienced leaders forget about the many new skills needed for recently-promoted leaders to succeed. This problem stems from a mental blindspot known as the curse of knowledge.

Company cultures and top leaders often unconsciously penalize subordinates who bring them bad news. This dangerous judgment error is called the MUM effect and it creates an atmosphere of secrecy that leads successful companies to stagnate and deteriorate.