The Missing Humans in Decision Making

The Missing Humans in Decision-Making

In the rush to quantify, regulate, and automate decision-making, we risk missing the invisible human factors that actually shape outcomes. Numbers alone can’t capture the full picture. Culture, human risk, trust, and courage, that which is often unseen can often make the difference.

What happens in our internal worlds, influences how we interpret and respond to that which happens in our external worlds.

Making the Invisible Visible

At the London School of Economics last week, I heard senior regulators and supervisors debate culture in the financial sector. Governors, central bankers, regulators.

The conversation was robust, technical, and deeply important. With the leaders who make decisions that affect us all. The topic ‘Culture in the financial sector’. How refreshing.

And yet, I was struck mostly by what wasn’t said.

There was no mention of neuroscience.
No mention of psychological safety.
No reference to human blind spots.
Bias was discussed - but only in the context of AI, not people.

Distracted by who wasn’t invited to the discussion.

These omissions matter. Ironically. one could say they are visible blind spots.

Because the greatest risks in governance don’t come from algorithms.

I’ve worked a lot delivering leadership programmes for governance professional and coached many. Risks come from humans failing to see, name, or voice the truths that matter most.

When governance aligns with how the brain functions best, boards make sharper decisions, hold healthier debates, and deliver more resilient outcomes.

The Data We Keep Ignoring

The GAABS Workplace Decision-Making report is a sobering read:

• 46% of leaders lack clarity on the process.

• 35% equate good outcomes with good decisions.

• 91% think they are above average in decision-making, while 85% have never had formal training.

Confidence is high. Competence is low. And when leaders conflate outcomes with process, they create false learning loops -  reinforcing luck and overlooking blind spots.

Boards fare little better. The Boardroom Decision-Making Effectiveness Index 2025 shows:

• Only 44% of directors feel psychologically safe.

• Just 24% feel safe to challenge decisions.

• Yet boards with high safety are three times more effective in strategy, culture, and governance.

The message is clear: decision-making quality is undermined by overconfidence, poor process clarity, and unsafe cultures. The data confirms what many of us know intuitively: without trust, respect, and courage, boards default to silence, lobbying, and groupthink.

This data legitimises a point in the language of boards. Because many board directors have little experience or literacy in this terrain. Human skills. They often won’t invest in it unless the numbers back it up.

What We’re Missing

We are in danger of missing the humans.

Decision-making isn’t purely rational. It isn’t all numbers, models, and predictable probabilities. Risk management may be the discipline, but it unfolds in environments where humans operate - and humans are messy, unpredictable, and often blind to their own internal judgments.

It cannot all be seen. Neuroscience shows that under perceived threat, the brain’s prefrontal cortex - responsible for reasoning and judgment - shuts down. Psychological safety keeps the brain open, enabling innovation, problem-solving, and foresight.

But safety alone is not enough. Culture creates the space - courage fills it.

Without courageous decision-making, psychological safety risks becoming a talking shop rather than a performance driver. It takes courage for directors to voice dissent, for executives to surface early warning signals, and for regulators to acknowledge when culture, not compliance, is the deeper threat.

The Golden Thread of Courage

Courage is the thread that runs through every effective decision where uncertainty and human risk are present. Psychological safety may open the door, but it is courageous decision-making that walks us through it.

• Courage to surface blind spots.

• Courage to prioritise ethics over economics.

• Courage to create cultures where ambiguity is debated, not silenced.

• Courage as a discipline, not a personality trait.

Without courage, psychological safety risks becoming a talking shop. With it, psychological safety lays the foundation. Courageous decision-making builds the structure.

Risk, Uncertainty, and Ambiguity

I don’t claim to have fixed answers here - only reflections as I sit with what I’ve been reading, researching, and listening to. But I do have answers for making the invisible dimensions of human decision making visible. To improve outcomes and culture.

A striking question at the LSE event left me wanting to stand and applaud, came from a psychologist. The question was trying to introduce ethics into the debate, but the response reframed it back into economics - precisely the blind spot I believe we must challenge

That misses something vital.

• Risk
  Machines are brilliant at calculating probabilities. But humans bring something else: moral weight. A 5% chance of economic contraction is not the same as a 5% chance of mass loss of life. During COVID-19, Jacinda Ardern chose to prioritise lives over GDP. That was not a calculation a machine could make - it was a values-based, courageous decision.

• Uncertainty
  Here, no model gives clarity. What matters is whether leaders can look one another in the eye in the storm and say: we don’t know, but we will act together. Trust and psychological safety are what allow boards and governments to make uncertain calls without paralysis or bravado.

• Ambiguity
  This is where human judgment is most irreplaceable. When the very nature of the threat is unclear, efficiency won’t save us. We need dialogue, diversity of thought, and ethical discernment. Ambiguity requires cultures where dissent is welcomed and moral trade-offs can be openly debated.

And yet, humans are also our own enemy here. We are prone to optimism bias in risk, to freezing in uncertainty, and to silence or hierarchy in ambiguity. The paradox is that we can add what machines lack - trust, courage, ethics - but only if we have leaders courageous enough to create the conditions that surface them rather than bury them.

From Oversight to Foresight

The Boardroom Index notes that high-performing boards engage in scenario planning, surface ethical dilemmas early, and steward culture with accountability. These are not technical achievements. They are human ones.

GAABS shows us that leaders often overestimate their decision-making skill. The Boardroom Index shows us that boards underestimate the importance of psychological safety. And the LSE event showed me how even regulators can overlook the human blind spots driving systemic risk.

Together, they highlight a critical truth: risk management is not just technical. It is cultural and psychological.

The Courageous Decision Agenda

So what must leaders and boards do?

• Make the invisible visible

  Treat silence, fear, and overconfidence as risk signals, not background noise.

• Embed psychological safety

  Not as a soft ideal, but as a governance KPI.

• Reframe decision quality

  Judge by process (values, ethics, bias-awareness), not outcome.

• Train courage as a discipline

  Through decision workouts, structured feedback, and reflection loops.

• Name hidden risks

  Status, power dynamics, alienation, chaos - these are not soft issues but material risks to decision quality.

The Human Advantage

Risk isn’t reduced by data alone. It’s reduced when humans make courageous decisions in cultures that allow truth to be spoken.

Psychological safety is the diagnosis. Courageous decision-making is the prescription..

If boards and leaders want to steward their organisations through uncertainty, growth, and disruption, they must go beyond culture change. They must build a new discipline: one where courage, ethics, and human risk awareness are treated as seriously as financial oversight.

That is the Be Braver promise.
Not simply “better culture.”
Not only “braver leaders.”

Not simply a cultural diagnosis. We prescribe courage.

But a pioneering framework for courageous decision-making - to be published soon - fit for the risks of our time.

Brave leadership isn’t about being right - it’s about risking being wrong for the right reasons

Bravery in leadership isn’t performative. It’s principled, high-stakes decision-making in the face of uncertainty - and a willingness to let others see the process.

Would you risk 800,000 customers to stand by your values?

We say we want innovation. We preach resilience. But too often, we punish the leaders who take risks and fail publicly. This piece is about brave leadership - what it really looks like, what it costs, and what it demands of us.

Because brave leadership isn’t about being right. It’s about being prepared to get it wrong for the right reasons.

If we are honest, many of us are afraid of making the wrong call - especially if it costs us customers, revenue, sales. Of being the person held accountable for the decision which saw a decline.

"We will always put our values above our bottom line. End of story."

That’s what Whitney Wolfe Herd said after banning gun imagery on Bumble. Her decision risked user loss and public backlash. She made it anyway.

In most organisations, we measure success by the numbers: retention, upsell, repeat purchase, followers, subscribers, customer tenure.

And yet, not all value is measurable. Not all risk is reckless. And not all leadership is safe.

The ambition is often to find more efficient ways to scale, optimise processes, and deepen customer loyalty.

But what if your best idea means losing customers - at least in the short term? What if you can’t guarantee the test or initiative will succeed?

This is where brave leaders separate themselves. Because implicit in "test and learn" is the reality that things might go wrong. Yet not all cultures make it feel safe to fail.

The best way to ensure we can take smart, collective risks- with the right preparation and the right people - is to work with leaders who model courage. Who create the conditions for it.

And ultimately, to become that kind of leader yourself.

I’ve worked with many of these leaders - often through the Be Braver programme. They’ve done the inner work. They know how to create cultures and behaviours that support courage, not just competence.

I’ve also been searching for examples of this kind of leadership in the public eye. Not just those who lead with conviction behind closed doors, but leaders who display commendable courage - making tough decisions visible when they knew there could be consequences- and visible bravery, showing others what principled action looks like in practice.

Learning Out Loud

One that has stood out is Reed Hastings, co-founder of Netflix. Long before Netflix, during his time leading Pure Software, Hastings reportedly asked his board to replace him - an extraordinary act of self-awareness. The board refused, seeing something in his leadership that even he couldn’t.

Leadership, after all, is a journey - not a destination. We will fall, fail, rise, and fall again.

Hastings has built his leadership philosophy around this reality. In No Rules Rules, co-authored with Erin Meyer, he shares:

"Whisper wins and shout mistakes."

He turns on its head what most of us were taught: celebrate success loudly, hide failures quietly.

But Hastings insists that failures - especially those born of calculated risk - should be shared, studied, and embraced. It’s the hallmark of a learning culture.

He urges leaders to “learn out loud” something I also explore in these Thinking Out Loud pieces. Make your decisions, experiments, and learnings visible. Let others in. Create safety through transparency.

Apply These Insights to Practice:

• Start your next team meeting by sharing a recent decision that didn’t deliver the outcome you hoped.

How did you prepare?

Was it reversible?

What did you learn?

Do you regret it?

• Ask: “What have we learned this week that we didn’t expect?”

• Make retrospectives more about learning than blame.

The Qwikster Debacle

Just imagine being the person whose decision triggered the loss of 800,000 customers and a tanking stock price. That was Reed Hastings.

But instead of deflecting, he took full responsibility citing overconfidence, poor communication, and failure to heed customer signals.

This wasn’t just visible bravery. It was commendable courage.

Apply These Insights to Practice:

• Before a bold move, engage those it may impact: colleagues, customers, partners.

Ask: Have we tested this?

Who might this affect in ways we haven’t thought about?

• Be willing to publicly course-correct. Your honesty will build more trust than your perfection ever could.

Values Before Revenue

After the Parkland shootings, Whitney Wolfe Herd, founder of Bumble, banned gun images from user profiles.

This was not a branding move. It was a values decision. She received threats. Her team faced real security risks. But she held the line:

“We will always put our values above our bottom line.”

Apply These Insights to Practice:

• Define your non-negotiables. Make decisions that align with them even when it costs.

• Ask: What does it cost us to compromise? What do we gain by staying true?

• Make values visible through action, not just statements.

Whitney Wolfe Herd didn’t just found a company she founded a movement. Bumble was built on a simple shift: women make the first move. It was a rebuke of toxic cultures she’d experienced firsthand.

Purpose wasn’t the marketing. It was the product.

Brave Leadership Is the Long Game

Leadership like this isn’t always celebrated in the moment. It’s often questioned. Sometimes punished. But over time, it lays the foundations for trust, culture, and growth.

So What? Why Does This Matter?

Too many organisations reward only outcomes, not the courage it takes to act without guarantees. But real leadership is principled, transparent action in the face of uncertainty.

Reed Hastings and Whitney Wolfe Herd show us what that looks like.

This is your reminder that brave leadership isn’t loud or perfect. It’s honest. It’s grounded. And it’s needed now more than ever.

So ask yourself:

Where are you being called to be braver?

And what will you do next that others can see - and learn from?