As audiences, we shouldn’t be careful about people who qualify their assurance. On the contrary, we should be careful about people who speak with certainty.
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You take your seat in attendance, the meeting starts, and our friendly presenter, Bob, projects a “background” slide. It’s filled with information related to the issue at hand. Some of the information is clearly relevant, other appears barely peripheral, and…
“Arnaud, are we using you in the right way?” I joined Accenture’s strategy group right out of grad school and was assigned to my first project for a large petrochemical company. It was a huge project, and the engagement team had…
Chances are, you are not solving the problem that you should. Nothing personal, dear reader, as I wholeheartedly trust your instincts and impeccable judgment, but focusing on our perceived problem—rather than a better one—happens to the best of us. We…
My good friend and mentor, stochastic processes über-guru Pol Spanos, has many wise sayings. One is: intuition is a good servant but a terrible master. Check your assumptions A recent report by the National Research Council of the National Academies looks further…
Whenever you’re facing a new, complex problem to solve, step back and reflect on your general approach from a philosophical point of view: are you aiming at solving it completely straight from the beginning or are you integrating a learning…
All problems are not equal: some can be solved only with facts while others require assumptions. Adapt your confidence accordingly. Problems are not all alike Morgan Jones’ The Thinker’s Toolkit separates problems according to their complexity. The simplest problems—deterministic and…