Tag Archives: Kahneman

Don’t Mistake Outputs for Inputs: The Folly of Trying to Plant “Cut Flowers”

Why does so much management advice sound reasonable but turn out to be of little value? Most readers will know what I mean. Take the following guidance on how companies can ‘accelerate their agile transformation’: Create a C-suite with an … Continue reading →

Posted in Change, General | Tagged change, complex systems, Drucker Forum, ecological perspective, Gary Klein, Kahneman, Peter Drucker, sensemaking, The New Ecology of Leadership | Comments Off on Don’t Mistake Outputs for Inputs: The Folly of Trying to Plant “Cut Flowers”

Strategy as the Creation of Power: The Lion versus the Fox

This week my blog consists of the review I wrote for Strategy+Business of Lawrence Freedman’s Strategy – a History: Lawrence Freedman defines strategy as the central political art. “It is about getting more out of a situation than the starting … Continue reading →

Posted in General, Strategy | Tagged Albion Small, annihilation, attrition, Clausewitz, cunning, David, fox, Goliath, Greeks, improvisation, Kahneman, Lawrence Freedman, lion, Machiavelli, narrative, Odysseus, performance, Romans, script, strategy, strength, Trojan Horse | Comments Off on Strategy as the Creation of Power: The Lion versus the Fox

The 3 “Rs” of Management: Rigour, Relevance and Rationality

The debate between rigour and relevance continues in management education, usually spurred by management professors’ concerns that practitioners are paying little attention to their research. The history of the problem is now familiar: in the first half of the 20th … Continue reading →

Posted in Change, General, Leadership, Strategy | Tagged Bloom, Carnegie Corporation, constructivist, ecological rationality, engineering, Ford Foundation, Hayek, Kahneman, Martin Wooldridge, Michael Raynor, Mumtaz Ahmed, rationality, relevance, Richard Rorty, rigour, rules, Schumpeter, System 1, System 2, The Economist, Van Reenen, Vernon Smith | Comments Off on The 3 “Rs” of Management: Rigour, Relevance and Rationality

Margaret Thatcher: Britain’s Turnaround Guy

The death of Margaret Thatcher, Britain’s Prime Minister from 1979 to1990, and her impending funeral have aroused passions and divisions as fierce as those when she was alive. Conservative Prime Minister, David Cameron, recalled parliament from its Easter recess to … Continue reading →

Posted in Change, General, Leadership, Strategy | Tagged Argentina, Arthur Scargill, Britain, change, community, Conservative, David Cameron, ecocycle, ecological perspective, Edward Heath, Falkland Islands, Gorbachev, Gordian knot, Harold Macmillan, Harold Wilson, Iron Lady, James Callaghan, Kahneman, Labour, Margaret Thatcher, narrative, negativity dominance, power, Reagan, Shakespeare, Soviet Union, The New Ecology of Leadership, Tony Blair, turnaround, Tversky | 1 Comment

Management and the Limits of Logic

I grew up in a middle-class English household that was not very intellectual. As a child I was cautioned against ever discussing religion, politics or money round the dinner table. As I grew older, I discovered that these were the … Continue reading →

Posted in Change, General, Leadership, Strategy | Tagged America, Berlin Wall, capitalism, communism, contradiction, David Hume, ecological rationality, emotion, Jonathan Haidt, Kahneman, limits of logic, metaphor, paradox, Plato, rationalism, rationalist delusion, reason, rider an elephant, Soviet Union, Stalin, The New Ecology of Leadership, The Righteous Mind, Thomas Jefferson, Tversky | Comments Off on Management and the Limits of Logic

Practical Wisdom: Homer 1 Spock 0

In his book Thinking, Fast and Slow, Daniel Kahneman, the psychologist who won the Nobel Prize for Economics in 2002, describes two great, fictional systems of human thought (fictional because they don’t actually exist as separate systems). System 1 is … Continue reading →

Posted in Change | Tagged Cass Sunstein, ecological rationality, Homer Simpson, John Dewey, Kahneman, left wing libertarian, Mr. Spock, Nudge, power, practical wisdom, Richard Thaler | Comments Off on Practical Wisdom: Homer 1 Spock 0