For others, its sometimes the pain and suffering of being on the receiving-end of poor decisions (take note Managers). For instance, Elvis Presley’s manager forbade him to tour internationally at the peak of his musical powers. For self-serving and ill-informed reasons, tied to his illegal-residency status among others, his manager (a carnival worker by trade) continuously exploited Elvis. Selfishly having him focus on cheesy-films and the Vegas circuit, rather than lucrative international tours, cost The King dearly. It is reported Elvis never questioned this unethical and greedy management guidance that he received.                

As we know poor management decisions are also rife in the commercial sphere. One of the most infamous examples, amongst a countless litany, is Excite’s (who?) refusal to acquire Google in 1999. There are conflicting versions of this event, but the bottom line is the Excite’s CEO rejected an offer to buy Google for $750,000. This was after negotiating down an initial offer of $1m. Today, it has become a $1trillion company. Undeniably, there are multiple factors that have contributed to Google’s subsequent success. Be that as it may, Excite passed on the opportunity to get their hands on the nascent company’s famous algorithm which had performed better in the like-for-like ‘bake off’ Executives had conducted between the two search engines.

One person that did make amends and learnt from their poor judgement was Dick Rowe. As Head of A&R at Decca Records, he was presented with a hole-in-one opportunity to sign up The Beatles before their breakout. He rejected this infamously rationalizing “guitar groups are on their way out”. Similar to Excite’s CEO, analyzing the thought process behind such decisions is a perplexing task. 

Here, it is incumbent upon leaders, managers, teams and even parents; to ensure they are able to base their decision making on a more rigorous set of inputs, processes, and contexts. Analytics and business intelligence systems (check that device buzzing in your pocket), play an important part in this process. Just as important, are one’s ability to manage the lens in which they view the world – their cognitive biases. As are your sense of curiosity and humility in seeking multiple perspectives from others, across multiple vantage points. 

Learning from these and other lessons is also critical to how we can become better decision makers. Thankfully for Dick Rowe, and our collective listening pleasure, he did redeem himself by signing up the Rolling Stones for their first record deal.