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Think Twice: Harnessing the Power of Counterintuition |  | Author: Michael J. Mauboussin
Publisher: Harvard Business School Press
Category: Book
List Price: $29.95
Buy New: $17.78
as of 3/20/2010 05:46 CDT details
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New (38) Used (12) from $16.80
Seller: innerselfmarket
Rating:  28 reviews
Sales Rank: 4469
Media: Hardcover
Pages: 204
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1
Dimensions (in): 9.3 x 6 x 1
ISBN: 1422176754
Dewey Decimal Number: 658.403
EAN: 9781422176757
ASIN: 1422176754
Publication Date: October 12, 2009
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| • | ISBN13: 9781422176757 | | • | Condition: NEW | | • | Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark. |
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Product Description
Leaders in all fields-business, medicine, law, government-make crucial decisions every day. The harsh truth is that they mismanage many of those choices, even though they have the right intentions. These blunders take a huge toll on leaders, their organizations, and the people they serve.
Why is it so hard to make sound decisions? We fall victim to simplified mental routines that prevent us from coping with the complex realities inherent in important judgment calls. Yet these cognitive errors are preventable. In Think Twice, Michael Mauboussin shows you how to recognize-and avoid-common mental missteps, including:
-Misunderstanding cause-and-effect linkages
-Aggregating micro-level behavior to predict macro-level behavior
-Not considering enough alternative possibilities in making a decision
-Relying too much on experts
Sharing vivid stories from business and beyond, Mauboussin offers powerful rules for avoiding each error. And he explains how to know when it's time to think twice-to question your reasoning and adopt decision-making strategies that are far more effective, even if they seem counterintuitive.
Master the art of thinking twice, and you'll start spotting dangerous mental errors-in your own decisions and in those of others. Equipped with this awareness, you'll soon begin making sounder judgment calls that benefit (rather than hurt) your organization.
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| Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 1-5 of 28
 Clear and Practical Guide to Making Big Decisions March 1, 2010
Christopher Conley (Stamford, CT USA)
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
In Think Twice Michael Mauboussin has written a practical guide to better decision making for business people, investors and others. With clarity, brevity, and a focus on action, Mr. Mauboussin mines research in the world of psychology and science to deliver telling insights into human behavior we will all recognize in ourselves and others that can lead to poor decisions if we let them.
When that little voice inside us says, "I really need to think this one through carefully", because the stakes are high and the situation is complex, where do we begin?
Mr. Mauboussin suggests that we begin by not fooling ourselves. He walks us through the many ways our natural inclination for self deception can lead to poor decisions. We all tend to embrace the "inside view" of a situation because of our own sense of superiority, optimism and control in dealing with personal and professional problems. We let anecdotal evidence skew our perception of facts. We underestimate the time it takes to complete a task. We are often unaware of how our situation influences our actions.
Mr. Mauboussin presents the types of decisions that are best informed by experts, collectives or computers. He shows us how outcomes are shaped by luck or skill and whether they may be subject to extreme events. He demonstrates how tunnel vision may unwittingly narrow our perception of decision making options.
The book is full of everyday mistakes and misperceptions that are recognizable but not always well understood or explained.
When you have a big decision to make, take out Think Twice and a pad of paper and work your way through it. You will avoid making common mistakes and you will find the tools to help you make good decisions.
If you don't have a big decision to make, read it to find out the mistakes that are made every day all around us. You will recognize immediately many of the situations he describes in his book and will benefit from the insight Mr. Mauboussin brings to them.
Either way you will come out ahead.
All the more compelling because Mauboussin's principles can be applied in areas beyond those where he proposed they be used. February 28, 2010
Charles M. Cohon (Morton Grove, IL United States)
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
"Think Twice" was wonderfully eye-opening and a joy to read.
And Mauboussin's points are all the more credible because there is further supporting evidence of the principles he describes well outside the domains where he proposed they be used. The principles in "Think Twice" fit perfectly with W. Edwards Deming's work that led to Japan's postwar resurgence and became the foundation of today's Lean Manufacturing practices and the Toyota Production System.
Unlike Mauboussin, Deming did not use the phrase "mean reversion," but Deming's view that manufacturing defects were evidence of inherent variability in manufacturing systems rather than evidence of lapses in a particular worker's effort fits perfectly with Mauboussin's work: "In a probabilistic environment, you are better served by focusing on the process by which you make a decision than on the outcome" (p.xx) could just as easily have come from Deming if Deming had been as good a writer as he was a statistician.
Again, Mauboussin's points are all the more compelling because they can be successfully applied to situations far beyond those where he proposed they be used. "Think Twice" is a must-read for anyone who wants to make well-informed, insightful decisions.
A useful contribution to this genre February 21, 2010
Irfan A. Alvi (Towson, MD USA)
5 out of 5 found this review helpful
There are now many good books available on why we make errors in judgment and decision making. This book represents Michael Mauboussin's contribution to this genre, and I think he has done a good job in pulling together a lot of information from a diverse range of credible sources. The information he presents has broad application, though he has a slight emphasis on business and investing applications (his own area of specialization). The book is also a fairly easy and quick read.
Perhaps the best way to describe the content of the book is to summarize the key points, roughly in the order they appear in the book:
(1) "Think twice" to avoid errors in judgment and decision making, especially in situations where stakes are high.
(2) Learn from the experiences of others in similar situations (making use of statistics when possible), rather than relying only on your own perspective, and don't be excessively optimistic about expecting to beat the odds.
(3) Beware of anecdotal information, since it can paint a biased picture. Related to this point, don't infer patterns which don't exist, especially when the available data is limited, and avoid the bias of favoring evidence which supports your beliefs while ignoring contradictory evidence (deliberately seek dissenting opinions if necessary).
(4) Avoid making decisions while at an emotional extreme (stress, anger, fear, anxiety, greed, euphoria, grief, etc.).
(5) Beware of how incentives, situational pressures, and the way choices are presented may consciously or subconsciously affect behavior and shape decisions.
(6) In areas where the track record of "experts" is poor (eg, in dealing with complex systems), rely on "the wisdom of crowds" instead. Such crowds will generally perform better when their members are capable and genuinely diverse, and if dissent is tolerated (otherwise the crowd will be prone to groupthink).
(7) Use intuition where appropriate (eg, stable linear systems with clear feedback), but recognize its limitations otherwise (eg, when dealing with complex systems).
(8) Avoid overspecialization, aiming to have enough generalist background to draw on diverse sources of information.
(9) Make appropriate use of the power of information technology.
(10) Overcome inertia by asking "If we did not do this already, would we, knowing what we now know, go into it?"
(11) Because complex systems have emergent properties (the whole is more than the sum of the parts), avoid oversimplifying them with reductionistic models (simulation models are often helpful), remember that the behavior of components is affected by the context of the system, and beware of unintended consequences when manipulating such systems.
(12) Remember that correlation doesn't necessarily indicate causality.
(13) Remember that the behavior of some systems involves nonlinearities and thresholds (bifurcations, instabilities, phase transitions, etc.) which can result in a large quantitative change or a qualitative change in system behavior.
(14) When dealing with systems involving a high level of uncertainty, rather than betting on a particular outcome, consider the full range of possible outcomes, and employ strategies which mitigate downside risks while capturing upside potential.
(15) Because of uncertainties and heterogeneities, luck often plays a role in success or failure, so consider process as much as outcomes and don't overestimate the role of skill (or lack thereof). A useful test of how much difference skill makes in a particular situation is to ask how easy it is to lose on purpose.
(16) Remember that luck tends to even out over time, so expect outcomes to often "revert to the mean" (eventually move close to the average). But this isn't always the case, since outliers can also occur, especially when positive feedback processes are involved (eg, in systems in which components come to coordinate their behavior); in a business context, remember to make a good first impression.
(17) Make use of checklists to help ensure that important things aren't forgotten.
(18) To scrutinize decisions, perform a "premortem" examination. This involves assuming that your decision hasn't worked out, coming up with plausible explanations for the failure, and then revising the decision accordingly to improve the likelihood of a better outcome.
While this book doesn't really present any new material, I still found it to be a good resource, so I recommend it. After all, this subject matter is important and practical, yet also counterintuitive, so it makes sense to read many books to help these insights sink in and actually change one's habits.
Think Twice,Read Twice February 15, 2010
Michael P. Maslanka (dallas, texas United States)
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
Excellent summary of ongoing cognitive research with solid explanations of regression to the mean(outstanding performance is impossible to maintain;it slips back towards the mean);update on Asch's experiments on conformity(group's deliberate wrong answer to obvious question actually changes the subject's visual perceptions);satisfying read on how the media lionizes certain stocks and CEOs who, time and again, fall back to average performance. Each chapter ends with valuable and useful take home points, so that the ideas talked about can be put to work in our lives. A must read for anyone interested in cognitive theory.
 Book Review from the Aleph Blog January 23, 2010
David Merkel (Ellicott City, MD United States)
2 out of 6 found this review helpful
Since I met him at a Baltimore CFA Society meeting in 2001, I have appreciated the intelligence of Mike Mauboussin. (My old boss was his roommate in college, so I was told, the name is pronounced "MOE-bus-son.") He was early to pick up on the value of behavioral economics and nonlinear dynamics ("chaos theory").
Think Twice is an effort to get all decisionmakers to take a step back and ask whether they are making decisions from shorthand rules, or from carefully analyzed data. The book is full of examples of how people are easily fooled by irrelevant data. Most of the examples I was aware of, becauseI have studied this stuff intensively. There were a few surprises for me, though.
Did you know that at the craps tables in Las Vegas, on average, when someone wants a higher number, they throw the dice hard, and when they want a low number, they give it a gentle toss? I found that to be an amusing example of the illusion of control in a case where humans have no control.
This book helps answer a number of tough questions:
* When are crowds better than experts, and vice-versa?
* Why don't we go get data, rather than listening to anecdotes?
* Why does an initial estimate play such a large role in estimating the final value? (Why don't people ignore the estimates, and start from scratch? It's too much work! Never underestimate the power of laziness.)
* Can subliminal cues lead people to make different decisions?
* Do I have to understand the whole system to understand the piece of the system that I am interested in?
* When can you outsource production, and when does it not make sense?
* When do catastrophic events occur, and why?
* How does one sort out happenstance (so-called "luck") versus skill?
The clear message of the book is don't be lazy; do your homework on any task. Try to be objective as possible, ignoring the opinions of others, and using as much data and cold logic as one possesses to confront the problem. Be aware of the mental shortcuts that hinder good decisonmaking.
I recommend this book, but with a quibble. It is not written in a truly user-friendly way. There are technical terms used and not defined that many average people will blink at, and maybe get part of the meaning through context, but not get it in full. If we Flesch-tested the book, it would come up at "college level" for reading. (As for me, I am to be understood at a high school level.)
Who can benefit from this book? Anyone who makes economic decisions could benefit. It would help them be more self aware of the pitfalls involved in decisionmaking. I found it to be a breezy read at 143 pages of main text, and the writing style is entertaining.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 28
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