Phil Rosenzweig is a contrarian. You can tell he enjoys disagreeing with people. The Halo Effect was a great read that targeted strategy researchers. His new book , Left Brain, Right Stuff, is an attack on decision research. It focuses on decision-making in the real world.
Positive Comments
The book has many good points and is certainly worth a read. That said, in a spirit I’d imagine Rosenzweig would appreciate I feel compelled to critique a little. Therefore I’m going to break my comments into two. Today is my day for positivity. Next week, I’ll be negative.
Rosenzweig considers both academic research and how managers actually decide. This allows him to make a number of pertinent critiques of academic research. Decision-making, as studied in the lab, deliberately tries to isolate specific effects. Thus academics search for single-shot decisions that the person doing the experiment cannot influence. For example, the roll of a die. When we see evidence that people think they can influence the die we know they are wrong. We conclude people think they can control things when they aren’t. The participants can only be right which leads to no paper, or wrong which can lead to a published paper. Academics like finding the later.
Decision-Making In The Real World
In the real world, however, managers often can influence outcomes. They can learn from feedback. Perhaps a small investment will allow you to learn so why not dip your toe in the water? Furthermore, massive strategic decisions are often very different from lab decisions. Such decisions are often hard to assess even well after the decision. This makes it hard for anyone, researcher or decision-maker, to know if they choose well.
Rosenzweig concludes by giving a number of questions we can ask ourselves. I don’t think all are helpful but some make a lot of sense. For example, “Are we making a decision about something we can control..?” (Rosenzweig, 2014, page 248). If conditions typically found in lab experiments don’t apply then you have a concern. Be careful about too simplistically applying the results to the real world.
For more on real-world decision making see here, here, and here.
Read: Phil Rosenzweig (2014), Left Brain, Right Stuff: How Leaders Make Winning Decisions, Public Affairs.