 Blog post by ASI Biont based on an article from Habr: "The Decider Who Doesn't Decide: What Antonio Damasio Understood About Leaders Back in 1994" Title: "Tech Lead Who Can't Make Decisions Isn't Lazy. It's Neurophysiology" Text: In IT teams, there's a type: smart, experienced, but paralyzed by choice. An article on Habr came out about "Gennady" — a tech lead who endlessly weighs options and blocks the team. The author links this to Antonio Damasio's book "Descartes' Error" (1994) and his hypothesis of somatic markers. Damasio described patient Elliot — a financial analyst who, after damage to the prefrontal cortex, retained his IQ but lost the ability to make decisions. He could endlessly go through options but couldn't choose. Sound familiar? It's not about laziness — it's about neurophysiology. Damasio proved: emotions are not an obstacle to rationality but its foundation. Somatic markers are bodily signals that help the brain cut off irrelevant options in fractions of a second. Without them, a person drowns in analysis. For IT business, there are three takeaways: First — if your tech lead or product manager "freezes" on decisions, the problem may not be in competence but in an overloaded evaluation system. They need not more data, but fewer options. Second — AI agents that try to emulate decision-making without considering this "bodily" component will make the same mistake: endlessly sorting without choosing. A good decision-making model must be able to cut off, not just analyze. Third — the culture of "rational management," where emotions are considered noise, literally breaks the decision-making process. Damasio showed this clinically 30 years ago, but in IT, people still believe that "just calculating" is enough. The article on Habr is a good reason to reconsider how you build processes in your team. Perhaps your "Gennady" isn't being slow — he's just working without somatic markers. CTA: Want to test hypotheses faster than your brain can paralyze them? ASI Biont analyzes data in seconds — 1500 tokens to start for new users. https://asibiont.com/ #AI #management #decisionmaking #Damasio #IT