James C. Zimring

As clever as humans can be we clearly make mistakes in managing the world around us, and at times, disastrously so. These patterns manifest both in our personal lives and our professional performance, both as individuals and in groups. However, the mistakes have two essential properties. First, there are patterns to the mistakes. Second, we are naturally blind to the patterns. The last 50 years of research into cognitive psychology and behavioral economics has uncovered how, when, and why humans (as individuals and groups) tend to get things wrong, over and over again, without learning from their mistakes. Consider the difficulty of using a human brain to notice the mistakes that human brains don’t notice. This talk explores how to learn to recognize the mistakes we make and to break the cycle of repeating them, including issues of corporate management.