One of my favorite things to do is anytime I’m on TV and someone asks me a question, “Hey, where’s the Dow going to be a year from now?” I love to just say, “I don’t know.” They don’t know how to respond to it. When you’re in a room full of peers, when you’re in a room full of consultants, and everybody is pretending to be knowledgeable and sophisticated, there are all sorts of group dynamics that lead to — the technical term is “suboptimal decision making.” freakonomics.com, July 26, 2017, The Stupidest Thing You Can Do With Your Money

Being brutally honest can have surprising and humorous results. People, who are often all geared up for the typical games of bluff and bravado, will become speechless when someone points out an unspoken truth such as the fact that we are over 100 days behind in our schedule. Others will sometimes immediately jump on that person who admitted the facts, sure that they have committed a management faux pas by telling the truth in a bad situation.

The tactic I’ve used in this situation is to just press on with the brutal facts and let the world reel at the courage it takes to speak the simple truth. It is this core strategy—just tell the brutal truth—that I’ve used successfully to disrupt suboptimal decision making.

See How To Get Honest Reporting

See Disrupt The Project To Make Big Improvements

What are you doing to ensure you team is not in a mode that encourages making suboptimal decisions?