Better Decisions
Natalia Karelaia, INSEAD Assistant Professor of Decision Sciences | July 23, 2014
Mindfulness is practiced in board rooms from Silicon Valley to Wall Street. But just how
much does it improve the quality of your decision-making?
Five years ago when I introduced mindfulness to my MBA decision-making class it was
perceived as something completely esoteric; there were maybe two or three students who could
relate to the concept. Today, not only have most of them heard about it, many are practicing it.
More and more corporations are offering mindfulness training to their employees. It’s being
incorporated into negotiation techniques and leadership manuals, in fact every area of business
where strong decisions are required.
While it’s generally accepted that mindfulness helps decision-makers to reach conclusions,
there’s growing evidence the positive influence goes much further, impacting the way decisions
are identified, made, implemented and assessed.
Close analysis of the latest mindfulness research, with Jochen Reb, Associate Professor of
Organisational Behaviour at Singapore Management University, for a chapter in the upcoming
book Mindfulness in Organisations, suggests that mindfulness techniques can have a positive
effect on all our widely-recognised stages of the decision-making process.
1. Framing the decision
Mindfulness can assist in being proactive and identifying when a decision should be made:
clarifying the objectives, generating options, avoiding irrational escalation of commitment to a
previous bad decision (the sunk cost bias) as well as recognising the ethical dimension of the
choice to be made. Research shows that people who are more mindful are also more aware of
their ethical principles and make decisions aligned to those values. This links mindfulness with
authenticity.
Before making any decision, mindful individuals take time to pause and reflect and listen to their
inner selves assessing their own values and objectives. Decision-makers who fail to link
decisions with their major goals may find their choice takes them somewhere they don’t
necessarily want to be.
Natalia Karelaia, INSEAD Assistant Professor of Decision Sciences | July 23, 2014
Mindfulness is practiced in board rooms from Silicon Valley to Wall Street. But just how
much does it improve the quality of your decision-making?
Five years ago when I introduced mindfulness to my MBA decision-making class it was
perceived as something completely esoteric; there were maybe two or three students who could
relate to the concept. Today, not only have most of them heard about it, many are practicing it.
More and more corporations are offering mindfulness training to their employees. It’s being
incorporated into negotiation techniques and leadership manuals, in fact every area of business
where strong decisions are required.
While it’s generally accepted that mindfulness helps decision-makers to reach conclusions,
there’s growing evidence the positive influence goes much further, impacting the way decisions
are identified, made, implemented and assessed.
Close analysis of the latest mindfulness research, with Jochen Reb, Associate Professor of
Organisational Behaviour at Singapore Management University, for a chapter in the upcoming
book Mindfulness in Organisations, suggests that mindfulness techniques can have a positive
effect on all our widely-recognised stages of the decision-making process.
1. Framing the decision
Mindfulness can assist in being proactive and identifying when a decision should be made:
clarifying the objectives, generating options, avoiding irrational escalation of commitment to a
previous bad decision (the sunk cost bias) as well as recognising the ethical dimension of the
choice to be made. Research shows that people who are more mindful are also more aware of
their ethical principles and make decisions aligned to those values. This links mindfulness with
authenticity.
Before making any decision, mindful individuals take time to pause and reflect and listen to their
inner selves assessing their own values and objectives. Decision-makers who fail to link
decisions with their major goals may find their choice takes them somewhere they don’t
necessarily want to be.
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