The world is noisy, and distractions abound. And through that noise, we have to make tough choices every single day. 

But what does all that distraction do to our decision-making process? And is there a way to tune out the irrelevant information to become better are making choices? 

Author Nuala Walsh joined the Visiting Experts podcast to talk about her new book Tune In: How to Make Smarter Decisions in a Noisy World. (Ahem...) Tune in to the episode above, or feel free to catch up on earlier episodes below. 

(You can also listen directly on Amazon, Spotify and Simplecast.) 

Three takeaways include: 

1. Poor decision-making has a very real cost. Forbes estimates it costs Fortune 500 companies $250 million annually, and Walsh thinks that's underestimating the challenge. And that doesn't even begin to explore the human consequences of certain types of decisions. Leaders often look for the easy answer, and will blame bad choices on poor timing or other external factors. To Walsh, this is bad news. You can't learn to make better choices if you're never taking accountability for your bad ones. Considering the high price tag of bad decisions, it's time leaders take an inward look. 
2. We often trust what we can see. But Walsh worries about "deaf" and "dumb" spots - the information we're not hearing or saying (either because we're chosing not to hear or say it). In particular, leaders might need to get out of their comfort zone and be ready to hear truths that make them uncomfortable (so ditch those syncophatic fans on your management team!). But importantly, they need to make sure they're creating not only a psychologically safe culture where people feel they have permission to speak up, but that there are other safeguards in place to give employees protections to speak up as well. This means whistleblower hotlines, anonymous feedback forms, and more. 
3. Embrace the decision friction. When making a tough choice, Walsh says it's crucial that you pause before committing. That might mean having a rule that decisions aren't made until you've asked three people outside of your work their opinion. Or perhaps it's a rule that no decisions will be made without sleeping on it first. It's easy to feel like everything is an emergency and that a decision needs to be made Right.Now.Immediately! But Walsh reminds listeners that's not actually usually the case. Yes, there are times when you have to make a decision quickly, but most situations aren't an emergency, so take a breath and put the choice on pause. 

Give the whole episode a listen above!

New episodes of Rotman Visiting Experts are released monthly on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and Amazon. Desktop listeners can also tune in on Simplecast.

Would you rather read than listen in? Check out the full transcript of the episode here.

Like this podcast? Check out Rotman's other audio series, Executive Summary, which explores the latest research and insight from our faculty.