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.