The biases that undermine strategic decision making often operate in meetings. Here is a menu of ideas for running them in a way that will mitigate the impact of those biases. Not every suggestion will be applicable to all types of decisions or organizations, but paying attention to the principles underlying these ideas should pay dividends for any executive trying to run meetings that lead to sounder decisions. Also included are related comments from executives and experts we spoke with while creating our special package: “Seeing through biases in strategic decisions.”

Make sure the right people are involved

• Ensure diversity of backgrounds, roles, risk aversion profiles, and interests; cultivate critics within the top team:

“You need internal critics—people who have the courage to give you feedback,” says Anne Mulchay, chairman and former CEO of Xerox. “This requires a certain comfort with confrontation, so it’s a skill that has to be developed. The decisions that come out of allowing people to have different views are often harder to implement than what comes out of consensus decision making, but they’re also better.” (See “Xerox’s Anne Mulcahy: ‘Timeliness trumps perfection.’”)

• Invite contributions based on expertise, not rank. Don’t hesitate to invite expert contributors to come and present a point of view without attending the entire meeting.
• For the portion of the meeting where a decision is going to be made, keep attendance to a minimum, preferably with a team that has experience making decisions together. This loads the dice in favor of depersonalized debate by eliminating executives’ fear of exposing their subordinates to conflict and also creates, over time, an environment of trust among that small group of decision makers.