Go back to your own experience: 8 to 10 months into the integration process (after a merger or an acquisition), the momentum seems to slow and difficulties surface. Michael Newman and I researched literature to see whether or not the observation our colleagues and I had about this specific moment was matched by others. These are some of what we…
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“How Loss Aversion may unconsciously impact our strategic thinking”
Friday October 21st, 2011 1 commentWikipedia provides the following definition for the psychological phenomenon known as Loss Aversion: “In economics and decision theory, loss aversion refers to people’s tendency to strongly prefer avoiding losses to acquiring gains. Some studies suggest that losses are two and a half times as powerful, psychologically, as gains. Loss aversion was first convincingly demonstrated by Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman”…
“How Dilemmas Management will help your strategic thinking”
Saturday October 15th, 2011 0 commentsIn a recent discussion, a psychiatrist friend of mine elaborated around the notion of “choice” and I found it particularly relevant to our professional lives: “Many people at the executive levels display one form or another of perfectionism. They are therefore very hard on themselves and their people. Referring to the risk aversion theory (which I was checking with him),…
“We’re Number one: What could we possibly learn from you?” by Michael Newman
Saturday October 8th, 2011 0 commentsOur success comes from being smart; yours is simply due to luck. We benefit from our carefully crafted strategies; you just happened to be in the right place at the right time. We are confident; you are arrogant…. Dismissing the opposition is a comforting pastime, but becomes a real danger if they are hungrier than us.  In the Enablers Network,…
Five steps to Death
Saturday October 1st, 2011 4 commentsI am profoundly grateful to those wonderful people who manage to summarize otherwise long and repetitive business books, in an article of 4 to 6 pages. A great company for this is obviously “Executive Book Summaries” (and now you know how consultants appear to find the time to read so many books…) Recently, I received from our partner Ben Clayton-Jolly…