Never Go With Your Gut: How Pioneering Leaders Make the Best Decisions and Avoid Business Disasters (Avoid Terrible Advice, Cognitive Biases, and Poor Decisions) by Gleb Tsipursky and Howard J. Ross
The title of this book explains what you will find when you open this to read. Gleb Tsipursky explains fully how to accomplish making these good decisions that "Pioneering Leaders" make and how they avoid disasters. He also has an abundance of examples of the huge pitfalls some of those same leaders have made by not using this plan and path to making the "best decisions. Truthfully, the decisions which led to the disasters were much easier for me to follow because I have been known to have "incredible ideas' which I have then implemented before I thought about them because - of course - they were so fabulous that they were surefire guarantees not to do anything but turn out tremendously - or so I believed completely. As you can probably guess by the title, this book explains and demonstrates how fallacious that thinking can likely be. Now, I am not a big business person so I do not need all of this information I told myself. However, after reading this amazing book, I learned a lot of strategies and thinking patterns I need to implement to accomplish my goals in almost anything. So much of what the author is teaching here is almost counter-intuitive and I am going to have to work and learn to change my thinking patterns. I am also going to have to treat this book more like a textbook than a one-time read and all is learned. Because these thinking patterns adjustments are not going to come easily, I am going to have to concentrate and really pay attention to what Mr. Tsipursky is teaching. If a reader just goes over his resume, he or she will find how eminently qualified this author is in his subject matter. The book is a very interesting read, but I have always been a "go with my gut" thinker, probably because it is easier, faster, and makes me feel so smart - right up until I hit a roadblock that, for me, is insurmountable. This book is just as much for the small business operator on Etsy or Ebay as for someone in a huge business. From reading it, I have realized that the next thing I need to do is to read it again so as not to miss any of the important information and instruction that is so far from my main thinking patterns. Amazingly enough, I am looking forward to making the effort. I cannot recommend this highly enough. All of the instruction and recommendations that are encapsulated in this short book are eminently understandable, make sense, and are completely opposite from the way I do things. I cannot imaging that this would not help anyone who reads it. It would also be helpful in almost any task in life. I can see how thinking and planning instead of butting heads with say, my children, while they were growing up could have made many days so much easier. So many applications popped into my head as I read!
I realize that I have not given a great deal of the exact information contained in the book, but I could never do it the justice that the author has done. It is nice that he is a brilliant man who speaks "regular people" English. I look forward to implementing this information into my life because I know it will be of incredible assistance to me as I find more and more ways to make it useful to me. This author has done an invaluable service for the rest of us. I love avoiding mistakes! I will be parking the book on my desk as a reference book as long as I have things I want to accomplish successfully. This book seems to me to be the best road map to follow to avoid disasters, but to reach a successful conclusion and repeat.
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From the Publisher
Techniques to Address Dangerous Judgement Errors
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Considering Alternative Explanations and OptionsSay your boss is curt with you at work. You might take this behavior as a sign that the boss is angry with you. Perhaps your boss is in a bad mood because her lunch didn’t agree with her, or she’s very busy and didn’t have a chance to chat with you as she normally would. When you combine considering the alternative with probabilistic thinking, you can follow up with your boss later in the day when she has a quiet moment and observe how she interacts with you. |
Considering Our Past ExperiencesAre you always running late to work meetings? Are you the type of person who starts to get ready for a meeting that’s fifteen minutes away exactly fifteen minutes before the meeting? Chronic lateness harms your relationships and reputation as well as your mental and physical well-being through constant elevated levels of cortisol, the stress hormone. Self-reflecting on how long activities have taken in the past to inform your current activities will help your business relationships and your well-being. |
Setting A Policy that Guides Your Future Self or Your Organization.This is one of the easiest ways to address cognitive biases. In the heat of the moment it may be hard to delay decision-making, consider alternatives, or practice the Platinum Rule. Yet if you set a policy by which you abide, especially by using a decision aid, you can protect yourself from many dangerous biases. Say you committed to delay your responses to professional emails that make you mad for at least thirty minutes. |
Evaluate the Long-Term Future and Repeating ScenariosWhat happened the last time you asked your colleague to help you with a report by tomorrow? If he agreed, did he carry out his commitment? Is this a pattern that repeats as you get increasingly aggravated about his failure? If so, why ask him to help you in the first place? Maybe it’s better to have a serious conversation with him about keeping his commitments or just let it slide. This kind of evaluation of repeating scenarios can greatly improve your business relationships. |
Confidence
The overconfidence effect, our tendency to feel way too much confidence in our judgments. But wait, aren’t leaders supposed to be confident? Absolutely! An attitude of confidence is critical in order to inspire followers to implement a decision made by the leader. Such motivation is a fundamental activity of leaders. Yet, wise leaders who want to protect the bottom line of their company know they need to separate exhibiting confidence during the making of decisions from implementing decisions.
Failing to Plan is Planning to Fail
The phrase “Failing to plan is planning to fail” is a myth, misleading at best and actively dangerous at worst. It is important to make plans, but our gut reaction is to plan for the best outcome and ignore the high likelihood that things will go wrong. Scholars call this cognitive bias the planning fallacy, where we have excessive confidence that our plans will go perfectly.
A more accurate phrase is, “Failing to plan for problems is planning to fail.” To address the high likelihood that problems will crop up, you need to plan for contingencies. To do so, you have to anticipate what problems might come up and address them in advance. You also have to recognize that you can’t anticipate every problem, and so you must build in a buffer of additional resources that can be deployed as unexpected problems come up.
Confirmation Bias
Why do so many business leaders who are generally perceived as highly competent and successful wear rose-colored glasses that prevent them from seeing obvious points of failure? They’re often brought down by the confirmation bias, a mental blindspot with two parts. First, we look only for information that confirms pre-existing beliefs. Second, we actively ignore any information that contradicts these beliefs.
Examples include leaders of large or midsize businesses who launch mergers and acquisitions, as well as entrepreneurs who start up small businesses, without first examining thoroughly the usual causes of failure for both types of endeavors.
It’s very typical for business leaders at all levels to look only for information that justifies their business case. It takes a lot of guts for someone from inside an organization to break the atmosphere of “make nice” if the organization doesn’t have a culture of healthy disagreement and searching for potential problems.
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Reviews with images
Leadership & Neuroscience Combined!!! Amazing Business Book that Everyone should Read!
As the podcast host of ABQ Business Podcast, I interviewed Gleb on about his new book. We had an amazing interview his knowledge and ability to take extremely tough subjects (neuroscience & disaster avoidance), and then explain it so that we can all better understand. Dr. Tsipursky business stories show how that down through history if we all humbly learn; then we can as leaders avoid disaster by being cognitively self aware!
Top reviews from other countries
Dr. Gernot Starke
The author is falling for the overconfidence bias himself
Reviewed in Germany on September 5, 2022
Cory Buott
Should be read and applied by more than just business leaders.
Reviewed in Canada on November 1, 2019
