Decision making as a Manager is full of risk. Too often decisions have to made quickly – which can lead to decision making traps in the form of hasty decisions based on incomplete information or generalizations. These decision making traps that we can fall in to as Managers have a fancy name – Logical Fallacies.
Logical fallacies are decision making traps that have errors in the logic behind an argument. These fallacies will present themselves as distorting an issue, drawing false conclusions, or misusing evidence or language. All of the fallacies will render an argument invalid.
Leaders need to be especially aware of logical fallacies that can occur as final decision makers. If there is a flaw in logic on your team, it is ultimately Management that is responsible for negative consequences.
Here is a list of the top logical fallacy traps that you and your team can fall in to. Read on to find out if you have stumbled in to one of these traps and how to recognize them in the future.
This list contains the most common business fallacies but is by no means an exhaustive list. There are many decision making errors that can be made as a Manager.
Formal and Informal Fallacies
There are two categories of fallacies: formal and informal. They are differentiated by the type of logical reasoning used. Formal fallacies use deductive reasoning. This would rely on a general hypothesis, an if/than statement.
Informal Fallacies are a collection of premises are combined to reach a conclusion. This is forecasting or previous behavior based decision making.
Ad Hominem Fallacy
Ad Hominem is Latin for, “against the man”. This is when personal insults or attack language is used instead of rational counter-arguments.
The argument used is irrelevant and instead rejects or attacks the person’s view based on personal characteristics, background, or personal features. A classic term is “mudslinging” where an insult is used as though it were counter evidence or supported a different conclusion.
An example of this fallacy would be rejecting a new graduates idea because you have decided they are inexperienced – what do they know? You are rejecting the person who came up with the idea, not the idea itself.
The Band Wagon Fallacy
Just because a majority believe something to be true, does not mean that it is correct. Often group-think or the concept of majority rules can sneak its way in to meetings, but that does not mean that it is the correct answer.
For instance, if a majority of people think that print advertising is the most effective method for their business, they will stick with print advertising. The reality is that markets change and digital marketing may prove to be more effective, but majority believe otherwise, so an alternative is not strongly considered.
The Strawman Fallacy
This fallacy makes a jump to attack a position that the person does not actually have. Instead of attacking the argument itself, they will make an equivalency by oversimplifying a nuanced position. They will argue an extreme outcome of an argument that was not actually made.
Want an example to make sense of this? For instance, if you make an announcement that you will be giving additional training to new employees, a tenured employee will come and accuse you of prioritizing the young staff because they want to drive all of the old ones out to retirement.
Your intention was to add support to the new staff members in continuing their education. The strawman argument was that you are attempting to drive long term employees to retirement – which was never a rationale in the first place.
The False Dilemma Fallacy
This fallacy is also referred to as a false dichotomy. The line of reasoning limits the choices to two, even when there are more options possible. Typically there is an oversimplification of the issues to limit the choices to an either/or choice.
It is often used to be polarizing, with argument heroicizing one side and villianizing the other.
An example of this fallacy is saying that there are only two types of workers: ones that work overtime and those who are lazy. This statement polarizes the workers and suggests that anyone who does not work overtime is not committed to their career and lazy. Since we are not exclusively discussing consulting, this is not the case.
The Hasty Generalization Fallacy
This fallacy is a hastily generalized statement without the sufficient evidence. Since there is a rush for a final answer or resolution, there is a reliance on an incorrect assumption, stereotyping, or exaggeration.
A hasty generalization is a challenging fallacy to avoid because there is no agreed upon measurement for what qualifies as sufficient evidence from which to draw a conclusion. So, a conclusion will be drawn without the sufficient evidence to back it up.
An example of this at the workplace would be: “The Millennials at work all need a mentor to be successful. We need to start a mentorship program or they will not be successful.” You believe this to be true because the Millennials that have risen through the ranks at your organization had support from senior leadership.
The Correlation/Causation Fallacy
Correlation does not always mean causation.
I can remember my Statistics Professor repeating this phrase ad nauseam. While it was annoying at the time, it has proven to be a great piece of advice. I have seen many staff and leaders fall in to this fallacy trap.
If two things appear to be correlated, this doesn’t necessarily indicate that one of those things absolutely caused the other. It could be a coincidence. There is also the trap of attempting to find causation between two points of data to prove a point.
For instance, you may see a spike in sales in June. You may attribute it to the new website color template. You conclude that the new background color from blue to white caused a doubling of sales. There could be many other reasons for the spike, but they are not explored or are discounted.
The Sharpshooter Fallacy
This fallacy gets its name from a “sharpshooter” that first fires his gun, and then traces a target around where the bullet holes were made. They then use this as evidence of what great shot they have.
Essentially, this fallacy relies on cherry picking data to demonstrate a preferred or predefined outcome. Instead of letting a full spectrum of data lead them to a conclusion, they find correlation to support their goals.
For instance, if you recently had a round of lay-offs you would look to the latest productivity reports to see the outcome. You could look at it and say, “see, this wasn’t so bad, productivity is at the same level!”. This completely ignores the fact that staff are disengaged and starting to leave.
The Slippery Slope Fallacy
This fallacy goes from a seemingly benign premise that travels through a series of events where it eventually links it to an improbable extreme outcome.
This unlikely outcome does not have a logical probability of occurring as a direct result of the first benign step.
For instance, “if we don’t get catering for the next meeting people will not want to attend in the future. If no one attends, then no one will know what’s happening on the project, we will lose the client, word will get out to other clients and the company will end up going bankrupt!” Is the company going to go under due to missing sandwiches? No.
The Personal Incredulity Fallacy
I don’t understand the conclusion, so it must be false. This fallacy relies on personal disbelief that an outcome is false because they do not understand how the outcome can be factual.
A lack of understanding does not make something false. For instance, even if you do not understand why the ice bucket challenge was a successful viral fundraising campaign, does not mean that the increase in ALS fundraising was contributed to something else.
The ‘No True Scotsman’ Fallacy
This fallacy is used to protect firm assertions that rely on a broad generalization in the first place. When presented with a counter argument, there is a change in the qualifiers for the original assertion to keep their belief firm.
For instance, if an employee is firm that visual basics is the absolute best way to create code they will discount any proof that it is outdated. “Only true programmers know how to make this code work. Anyone who believes other languages are better are not true programmers”.
The Tu quoque Fallacy
This fallacy relies on criticizing the hypocrisy of an opponent rather than countering the argument with fact. They will argue criticism with criticism in an effort to discredit their opponent.
So, if a claim is made, instead of arguing against the claim, they will criticize the person making it. For instance, if you make a claim that an individual is not ready for a project management role yet, it will be countered with a criticism over your lack of project management skills.
The Sunk Costs Fallacy
Sometimes we have invested so much time in a project or process improvement that we are reluctant to abandon it because we have put so much time and resources in to it.
This fallacy of sunk costs ignores the evidence that a project is fruitless and focuses on how much money and time has been invested. It ignores the future costs associated with staying the course.
An example would be, “I’m halfway through a Master’s program. It isn’t really what I want to do – but I might as well finish it so I’ll have something”.
How do we check our future decisions?
Decision making as a Manager is not easy. We rely on our experience to make quick decisions. These fallacies are meant as an awareness campaign for decision making traps that may come back to haunt you.
When you are making a decision, you should always make a quick check about your information quality, completeness, and your own biases. This does not mean that you should doubt yourself and feel crippled by decision making paralysis in the future. Awareness will help ensure you are making good quality decisions and staying out of the decision making traps