article thumbnail

3 Ways to Improve Your Decision Making

Harvard Business Review

Following them will improve your ability to predict the effects of your choices and assess their desirability. Nobel-prize-winning psychologist Daniel Kahneman has said that overconfidence is the bias he’d eliminate first if he had a magic wand. Rule #1: Be less certain. Rule #2: Ask “How often does that typically happen?”

article thumbnail

Life is Luck — Here’s How to Plan a Career Around It

Harvard Business Review

Daniel Kahneman has claimed the following as his favorite equation: Success = talent + luck. Kahneman’s implication is that the difference between moderate and great success is mostly luck, not skill. If you imagine a game of “career roulette,” you end up a starving artist 99 times for every time you end up a rockstar.

Career 8
Insiders

Sign Up for our Newsletter

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

article thumbnail

Why New Leaders Should Be Wary of Quick Wins

Harvard Business Review

That’s because when a new leader takes hold, changes aren’t just about efficiency or revenue; they are also about people’s feelings of vulnerability and uncertainty about what the changes will mean for them. Greg rolled up his sleeves and worked harder than he ever had, pushing the organization and himself.

article thumbnail

A Checklist for Making Faster, Better Decisions

Harvard Business Review

And then there is the unfortunate circumstance that economics in the twentieth century was based on the theory that people make rational choices when given good information, a theory proved to be somewhere between spotty and completely wrong thanks to a revolution in behavioral economics, led by Nobel Prize winner Daniel Kahneman.

article thumbnail

The Business Lessons of the Belmont Stakes

Harvard Business Review

Following exciting wins in the Kentucky Derby and the Preakness, the chestnut colt is trying to do what no horse has done in 34 years. Daniel Kahneman , a renowned psychologist who won the Nobel Prize in economics, developed this concept in the 1970s along with his collaborator, Amos Tversky. This is called the inside view.

Beyer 15
article thumbnail

The Business Lessons of the Belmont Stakes

Harvard Business Review

Following exciting wins in the Kentucky Derby and the Preakness, the chestnut colt is trying to do what no horse has done in 34 years. Daniel Kahneman , a renowned psychologist who won the Nobel Prize in economics, developed this concept in the 1970s along with his collaborator, Amos Tversky. This is called the inside view.

Beyer 11
article thumbnail

Instinct Can Beat Analytical Thinking

Harvard Business Review

We misunderstand probability , we’re myopic , we pay attention to the wrong things, and we just generally mess up. What follows is a much-edited rendition of the full conversation. HBR: Most of us are used to hearing about how bad we are at making decisions under conditions of uncertainty, and how our intuitions often lead us astray.