Category: Decision Making
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Managerial Advice From The Trolls In Frozen
I recently read the following: “People often regret not getting rid of problem staff soon enough”. This struck me as emblematic of everything wrong with business advice. It was glib, unsupported by evidence, and designed to resonate with our biases. Better to take managerial advice from the trolls in Frozen. Regret Sure some managers will…
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Scarcity Theory: A Hammer, But A Good Hammer
Mullainathan and Shafir’s new book Scarcity [written in 2014] explains that people make some debatable decisions when a resource is scarce because of the stress the shortage causes. They introduce Scarcity Theory: a hammer, but a good hammer. Poverty Leads To Worse Decision-Making The authors help explain poverty sometimes encourages people to take decisions that…
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Seeing The Big Picture Behind People’s Attitudes
An interesting psychological phenomenon is the tendency to ascribe stable attitudes to people rather than consider the context. I can only speak to where I’ve worked — the UK, US, Canada — but it seems pervasive to me. Seeing the big picture behind people’s attitudes is important. Inferring Attitudes Despite Writer Having No Choice Early…
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Romance, Fear And Self-Knowledge
Marketing theory often starts with the assumption that we know what we want. That marketers serve consumers’ preferences underpins the marketing concept. Unfortunately, there is quite a lot of research that suggests that we don’t know our own preferences that well. This is illustrated at the intersection of romance, fear, and self-knowledge. A Valentine’s Day…
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Simplification, Oversimplification, And Competitive Advantage
There are many ideas to learn in strategy. It is helpful to convey them in a clear and easy-to-understand manner. Yet I have concerns about oversimplification and competitive advantage. Simplifying Competition Bruce Greenwald‘s and Judd Kahn’s book has great cases and it is easy to see why managers might find the certainty they communicate useful. They suggest simplifying…
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Classification And The Platypus: Imposing Rigid Structure On A Complex World
Classification is fundamentally a problem. It is putting things that are different into categories to make us feel better. (Perhaps more fairly to allow us to cope with a complex world). Classification and the platypus tells us that we shouldn’t do it more than we have to. Classifying Seems To Cheer Some People Up People…
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Reference Dependence In A Squash And A Squeeze
I’m interested in how to explain tricky ideas in simple language. (This was the intention of Behavioural Economics For Kids). Julia Donaldson is an useful place to start looking for ideas to help with this. She, an exceptionally successful children’s author, is excellent at conveying engaging stories with interesting messages in few words. There is…
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David, Goliath And Malcolm
It seems fashionable to denigrate Malcolm Gladwell. Academics moan; “he is conceptually loose and borrows ideas from other people”. It reminds me of Louis in Casablanca. People seem shocked to hear that gambling is going on. What were the critics expecting? Of course, Gladwell popularizes other people’s ideas. (For the record he can borrow and…
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Engaging With Other Disciplines
Has the way we think changed recently (on an evolutionary timescale)? Marlene Zuk suggests that as change is constant, the way we think will also have changed. This conflicts with evolutionary psychologists. They assume human brains are products of adaptation to the distant past. In one sense the evolutionary psychologists’ assumption is wrong. Like any…
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Natural Does Not Equal Right
New year’s resolution time so I’ll discuss Marlene Zuk on our adaptation to diets. Zuk’s book was interesting and entertaining. I do have some issues which I’ll discuss next post. For now, I’ll note she enjoyed herself critiquing evolutionarily inspired diets and made useful criticisms. The headline is natural does not equal right. Just because…
