Here is another valuable Management Tip of the Day from Harvard Business Review. To sign up for a free subscription to any/all HBR newsletters, please click here.

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In most organizations authority for the most important strategic decisions is left to the highest-paid person’s opinion (HiPPO). But relying on the judgment of one person or a few individuals is bound to lead to trouble.

HiPPOs often are wrong, due to inherent biases, misinformation, and other types of noise that can cloud one person’s opinion.

To cancel out much of that noise, companies should integrate crowd voting into their decision-making strategies.

o Crowd voting integrates the expertise, knowledge, and perspectives of many people.

o These opinions can help shape a more well-rounded frame of reference, and can vastly improve the chances that a strategic decision will lead to success.

o Crowd voting doesn’t render HiPPOs obsolete; rather, it encourages HiPPOs to work with the crowd in order to develop more-successful strategies.

Adapted from “The Antidote to HiPPOs: Crowd Voting,” by Karim R. Lakhani

To check out that HBR article and join the discussion, please click here.

I also urge you to check out Judgment Calls: Twelve Stories of Big Decisions and the Teams That Got Them Right, co-authored by Thomas Davenport and Brook Manville and published by Harvard Business Review Press (2012).

Moreover, you may wish to check out an anthology, Management Tips from Harvard Business Review, by clicking here.