A warning about this blog:<\/strong> As many of you know, I can, at times be \u201cDr. Bill,\u201d meaning I can get into nerdy things that I find fascinating and others may not. This is a nerdy blog.<\/p>\nI have been reading a book called \u201cThe Undoing Project,\u201d by Michael Lewis. The book is a history of the unlikely partnership between Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky that produced some of the most important research on how we humans make decisions.<\/p>\n
Fortunately, the book is more than just a biography. \u201cThe Undoing Project\u201d also describes, in relatively accessible language, the content of their work, particularly how various human traits systematically impede our decision-making.<\/p>\n
Kahneman won a Nobel prize for this work (Tversky died shortly before the prize was awarded). I first encountered Kahneman and Tversky as part of my doctoral work at Stanford. Tversky actually, was a Stanford professor when I was there, though I never took any of his classes.<\/p>\n
My dissertation was a study of how formal training in \u201crational decision-making\u201d influenced the way people made decisions. The premise was that companies were spending billions to train people in formal decision-making techniques, but the descriptive literature on organizations showed that no one used these techniques.<\/p>\n
The goal of my dissertation was to find out if the training had any impact at all. My research showed that training in management decision-making did not improve the efficiency or quality of decision-making, but had other important impacts (more on that later).<\/p>\n
Kahneman and Tversky provided one of the explanations for why people did not consistently practice rational decision-making. So, I was an instant fan of their work.<\/p>\n
Now, some 30 years later, it\u2019s great to see this book about them and their work. I have several take-aways from \u201cThe Undoing Project\u201d that are directly relevant to Cerebyte\u2019s work in general and particularly our work in leadership development, which I will discuss in my next blog post.<\/p>\n
Check back in later this week for Part 2 of The Undoing Project Unwrapped.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A warning about this blog: As many of you know, I can, at times be \u201cDr. Bill,\u201d meaning I can get into nerdy things that I find fascinating and others may not. This is a nerdy blog. I have been reading a book called \u201cThe Undoing Project,\u201d by Michael Lewis. The book is a history…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"\n
The Undoing Project unwrapped part 1 - a close look at decision-making - Cerebyte<\/title>\n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n\t \n\t \n\t \n