A lively, research-based tour of nine common business decision-making traps—and practical tools for
avoiding them—from a professor of strategic thinking
We all make decisions all the time. It’s so natural that we hardly stop to think about it. Yet even the smartest and
most experienced among us make frequent and predictable errors. So, what makes a good decision? Should we trust
our intuition, and if so, when? How can we avoid being tripped up by cognitive biases when we are not even aware
of them?
In You’re About to Make a Terrible Mistake!, strategy professor and management consultant Olivier Sibony draws
on dozens of fascinating and engaging case studies to show how cognitive biases routinely lead all of us—including
even the most renowned business titans—into nine common decision-making traps. But instead of rehashing the same
old “debiasing” techniques that fail managers time and again, Sibony explains that the best way to avoid the pitfalls
of cognitive bias is to craft an effective decision-making architecture in your organization—a system of techniques
and processes that leverage collective intelligence to help leaders make the best decisions possible. And provides forty
concrete methods for doing so.
Distinctive in the clarity and practicality of its message, You’re About to Make a Terrible Mistake! distills the latest
developments in behavioral economics and cognitive psychology into actionable tools for making smart, effective
decisions in business and beyond.