---
title: "Why Good Boards Make Bad Deci… | Insights — Lyoen & Partners"
url: https://lyoenandpartners.com/insights/why-good-boards-make-bad-decisions-four-factors-undermining-board-effectiveness
description: "PwC (Oct 1, 2025) \"Why Good Boards Make Bad Decisions: Four Factors Undermining Board Effectiveness\" identifies four behavioural traps that recur in other…"
lang: en-US
---

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Wednesday, October 1, 2025risk

# Why Good Boards Make Bad Decisions: Four Factors Undermining Board Effectiveness

PwC (Oct 1, 2025) "Why Good Boards Make Bad Decisions: Four Factors Undermining Board Effectiveness" identifies four behavioural traps that recur in otherwise well-credentialed boards: psychological safety failures, where directors facing high interpersonal risk withhold ideas, challenges or dissent and push the board toward the safest rather than best decisions; threat rigidity, which shuts down creativity precisely when uncertainty demands adaptive thinking; escalation of commitment, where boards keep funding losing courses to justify prior investment or preserve self-image; and underestimating collective intelligence, where group norms favour conformity over diverse-team problem-solving. Useful diagnostic for SEA mid-market boards whose harmony rituals routinely produce default-on-the-incumbent-strategy outcomes.

Sources

PwC (https://www.pwc.com/us/en/services/governance-insights-center/library/board-culture.html)

Topic: Decision Quality: https://lyoenandpartners.com/insights/topic/decision-quality

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