Many organizations believe bad decisions come from a lack of intelligence or experience. In reality, most poor decisions are the result of contaminated decision environments.
Decision hygiene is the skill of keeping the decision-making process clean from bias, emotion, and hidden pressure.
When teams rush decisions, mix unrelated objectives, or allow hierarchy to silence dissent, the quality of thinking degrades. Even highly capable people begin to justify weak logic because the environment encourages speed or agreement over accuracy.
Strong decision hygiene starts with separation. Problems are defined clearly before solutions are discussed. Opinions are separated from data. Urgency is separated from importance. This discipline prevents emotional shortcuts from dominating critical choices.
Another key aspect is protecting dissent. Teams with good decision hygiene treat disagreement as information, not conflict. The absence of challenge is often more dangerous than open debate.
Organizations that invest in decision hygiene do not necessarily decide faster, but they decide better. Over time, this reduces rework, internal friction, and strategic drift.
The quality of an organization is often visible in how it makes decisions when no one is watching.
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