NCSB Journal Spring 2026

poorly, and when he left, the firm was able to get out of three supply deals (one of which was with a friend), resulting in $18,000 in savings within ten days of his departure. These poor decisions are often driven more by who a person knows, because riding shotgun is often the main culprit: Ego. But it’s not just substantive personnel choices that are affected. Consider this: Based on a recent exhaus tive study of buyouts of publicly traded com panies, it was independently determined that the acquiring company paid a 41% premi um. Distilled, this means that the acquiring company paid $141 per share for a company that was otherwise valued at $100 a share because the acquiring CEO thought he could run the acquired company 41% more efficiently. Except the stubborn projected efficiency rarely happened, which seems like a pretty powerful disconnect, don’t you think? Sometimes we can be too big for our own...well, you know the rest of this old, but still spot-on, truism. One of the advantages of experience— what my wise father referred to as “laps around the track”—is that you learn what works, and what does not work as well or work at all. But do not keep letting your ego keep taking you down the other lesser path when you know better. So, what is the solution when our neme sis—ego—takes hold? The first choice among lots of near equals, thoughtful busi ness writers observe, is to establish a decision making process that encourages contrary views, to interpret criticism as a noble and necessary function, and to sift out personali ties and an insistence on “my way” to find, collectively, “our way,” stripped away of ego. Understanding this commonsense dynamic, the Roman Catholic Church for centuries made use of a “devil’s advocate” in canonization (who will be named a saint) decisions. The devil’s advocate had a noble name himself—promoter of the faith— pro motor fidei . His job was to build a case against sainthood. Pope John Paul II eliminated the position in 1983, ending 400 years of tradition. Since that time, revealingly, saints have been can onized at a rate of nearly 20 times faster than in the early part of the 20th Century. Here is a construct offered by some pop ular business writers about how to analyze the strength of an idea while avoiding some times sensitive egos: What would have to be

true for a proposed plan to be the best plan? When the analysis becomes more collabora tive in nature—finding the objective facts— rather than the sometimes-risky prospect of challenging the boss or other people in the group, or pesky subjective feelings, you reach a better result. It gives everyone a chance to back away from their beliefs without feeling their personal ideas have failed to carry the day. Everyone gets the credit for the good result achieved. And it works, too. Some years ago I participated in a large annual fundraising campaign for one of the key non-profit organizations in our city. Structural changes in some of the major con tributing companies and the death of one leader who made a substantial contribution each year brought into clear focus the hard question: If we were going to achieve our stretch goal, we were going to have to adjust our plan, because the level of thinking which got us there in the past was not going to get us to our high goal. And it was going to take an effort in which everyone had to be clearly focused. We developed a recurring question lead ers should ask everyone involved: What is our best chance to do the most good for the most needy among us in the near term? The answer was to focus on the agencies we sup ported that helped those in need help them selves. We needed to emphasize that we were giving those in need a hand UP and not a handOUT. It also involved widening the focus of supporting individuals to ask for more of a financial commitment, especially to identify and encourage those givers of wealth to pledge amply because of the demonstrated value of our work. We had to be “all in” if we were going to reach our goal, not sidetracked by personalities and egos. None of our leadership team knew these individuals well enough to ask for more sig nificant pledges, but they knew those who did. Those individuals were the ones who asked for these much larger financial com mitments, and with enormous success. When the organization wanted to single out these individuals who gained these new significant pledges, these seasoned leaders insisted that the recognition went to the organization and not to them individually, emphasizing the collaborative effort. This sifted out personalities and an insistence of “my way” to find, collectively, “our way,” stripped away of ego.

Imagine that. As a result, our organization led the state in percentage of new dollars raised to goal, and our agency was nationally recognized as running a model campaign. Because we asked in our own way this fundamental question: What was our best path? Which was to be willing to be less concerned with whose plan got the credit than which plan got the job done. And in the process the entire community stood up. Professionals such as lawyers, doctors, and other educated leaders are subject to the ego sway maybe more than others. Our past general successes sometimes lead us to believe we know more than we know in fact. Ego is a powerful force. An important lesson is to nudge our ego out of that often-well disguised blind spot and to see it coming. Harness your well-earned ego but keep it in its proper place. Like those seasoned lead ers did in that successful campaign, keep your eye on the We rather than the Me. Because you learn a lot when you see a plan that works, works well, and is a plan that everyone owns. WHAT I HAVE LEARNED ABOUT LIFE ON THE WAY TO THE COURT HOUSE IS THIS: confirmation bias often leads us to structurally wobbly decisions. A good decision is crafted by a thoughtfully designed construct that allows for an objec tive stress test of key assumptions. If we do not have a more friendly way to analyze problems, and we fail to possess a healthy respect for the real value of the noble art of the artfully drawn other points of view, we are headed for some decisions which could be much stronger. And some decisions which may be in fact poor, weak, and even costly. A process that focuses on distilling collaboratively determined critical facts in which there are no perceived winners and losers in the process is in fact the winning way for all the parties. n This article is part of a series of articles writ ten by Mike Wells entitled “On the Way to the Courthouse.” You can find an archive of “On the Way to the Courthouse” articles on his firm’s website, wellslaw.us. Mike Wells has been a trusted advisor to clients for over 30 years. He concentrates his practice in the areas of estate planning, estate administration, elder law planning, complex civil litigation, workers’ compensation, personal injury, and fiduciary litigation.

SPRING 2026

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