I am soliciting real examples, suitably camouflaged, in response to this post.  Examples can be of decisions made by a variety of people with a known motivation (i.e. well-intentioned, malicious, irresponsible) or an unknown motivation.

Included below is an excellent blog post about flaws in Decision Making from an IEDP blog.  In true HR and non-threatening consultant style, the analysis assumes that the decision maker is well intentioned.  I have certainly seen people, who are sincerely doing the best they know how to do, make flawed decisions.  However, the world has its share of thieves, psychopaths, addicts and simply unethical people who make harmful, if not disastrous, decisions.

From my own experience, I can attest that truth is stranger than fiction.  I will include one real-life example from my own experience (where the names have been changed or omitted to protect the guilty).

Once upon a time, there was a Vice President of a Division, (pseudonym Fosco), who shut down a QA person, (pseudonym Jester),  by pulling him into a conference room and telling him to stop bringing up issues with a certain product.  Fosco informed Jester that he was just biding his time until retirement and did not want to be bothered with problems.  Some time later, Fosco was quietly fired because he had been funneling consulting money to a firm in which he had an undisclosed interest.

In the aforementioned example – seeing someone actually get their just deserts is a welcome, but very rare, outcome.

An excellent general discussion about decision-making from the International Executive Development Programmes (IEDP) May 3, 2011 blog:

http://www.iedp.com/Blog/Four_Decision-Making_Red_Flags