Whitepapers

To err is truly human and mistakes are truly inevitable. Paul Nutt, an Ohio State University business school researcher, provides data showing that half of all decisions made in business organizations fail. In his book, Why Decisions Fail, he shows that decisions mostly fail because the deciders ignore feedback. The lesson is clear, decision making in business is a random walk—no one is any…

Although we live in an age that glorifies innovation, there is a big difference between theoretically advocating for it and being able (or willing) to actually implement it. None of this is really new. From Schumpeter’s classic definition of innovation as “creative destruction” to recent portrayals of innovators as disruptors or constructive nonconformist, we have known for years…

In his brilliant 1950 film, Rashomon, the Japanese director Akira Kurosawa depicts the story of a rape and murder four times, from the perspectives of four characters. The message is clear: Different people can see the same events in dramatically different ways. In the workplace this phenomenon is particularly evident when it comes to underperformance and failure. An outcome that an employee…

It is fascinating to observe traders on a trading floor and then observe their performance over time. One of my consistent observations is that successful money managers alternate their time in three modes: In a group on the trading floor, getting a feel for what people are thinking and doing and exchanging information; In individual conversations on the trading floor, discussing observations…

Why does personality matter? To answer this question, we need to resolve two prior issues: 1. What is personality? 2. Who wants to know why personality matters? The answer to the question, “What is personality?” is that there are two answers. There is what we call “personality from the inside” and there is what we call “personality from the outside”. Personality…