From wiktionary.org: Maverick: One who does not abide by rules. Etymology: from the surname of Texas lawyer Samuel Maverick, who refused to brand his cattle. Maven: A self-styled expert in a given field. Etymology: from Yiddish מבֿין (meyvn) from Hebrew מֵבִין (mevín, “one who understands, connoisseur, expert”). Everyone loves a maverick, but mavens get it…

Eric Fernandez, on his blog The Royal Society of Account Planning has posted an excellent visual guide to cognitive biases. He lists 105 in total, including 42 directly related to decision-making. Many of the other biases are relevant to teams and businesses. My personal favorite? The Texas Sharpshooter Fallacy: adjusting the hypothesis after the data…

So the big re-org was completed last year, the new strategic objectives are in place and we are dutifully watching our dashboard. But the company is not tracking. Now what? Too often the metrics on which companies rely do little to diagnose problems when things go wrong. This happens because we’re never planning to fail…

There was a time when business transformation was a process that occurred once in a professional career. But cut-throat competition and short development cycles are pushing leading businesses into a state of continuous, low-level transformation. All companies react, but handling transformation proactively requires a plan. How can your company stay out in front? 1. Use…

In today’s fast-changing business environment, organizational agility is of great value to maintaining a competitive advantage. So say the executives surveyed in a 2009 Economist Intelligence Unit report: “Organisational agility: How business can survive and thrive in turbulent times”, March 2009. Ninety percent of interviewed executives believe “organizational agility is critical for business success”, and…

Just finished a podcast from the Centre for Creative Leadership on decision making myths, discussion how business executives and leaders can improve their decision making skills. They start off examining the paradox of leadership, and how ego and confidence can be great leadership qualities, yet also handicap team decision-making processes. The problem seems to focus…

Risk is a concept that everyone understands and almost no one evaluates very well. Risk is a function of both the likelihood that something will happen and the consequences that result if it does. When evaluating risks we always seem to be more focused on one or the other. For example, driving without your seatbelt…

I can say this because I was trained as one: scientists are geeks. They are lousy team players and most have as much business sense as a test tube. But they have figured out something that businesses can benefit from. It’s widely misunderstood but extremely powerful: the scientific method. photo credit: blondyimp Science is all…

Seth Godin’s at it again, blogging about our favorite subject: decisions. His post Tuesday talked about the avalanche of data we now have at our disposal to assist in our decision-making, and how in many cases, because the data are counter-intuitive, they are ignored. The real problem is the balance between intuition and data, and…