The Decision-Making Studio Podcast

Today, I am delighted to be joined by fellow decision-making professional Melina Moleskis. I came across Melina via Christian Hunt, who I've had on the show a couple of times now. Melina and I featured in a two-part series on decision-making in Christian's Human Risk podcast

Melina is the founder of Meta Decisions, a consultancy that leverages decision and behavioural science to help people and organizations make better decisions. She has a PhD in managerial science, an MBA from NYU Stern, and a bachelor's degree in mathematics.

And she takes all that training and applies it in very useful and interesting ways. You will hear a lot of that reflected in this wonderful conversation that covered so much interesting ground from:

• what the decision and behavioural sciences are;
• the concept of indecisiveness and how to overcome that;
• dealing with complexity
• documenting decisions -This is something that is actually quite overlooked at times:
• “Kill criteria”
• the state of decision education

· And we even get into some discussion about sport and its role in decision-making as a microcosm of good decisions. Melina has a great perspective on that because she's also a former competitive basketball player.

Show notes:

Melina on LinkedIn

Melina’s firm Meta Decisions

What’s Your Problem by Thomas Wedell-Wedellsborg

Adam Grant

The Alliance for Decision Education on Keeping a Decision Journal

Emotional Agility by Susan David

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Today, I welcome back my friend Alison Taylor to the show. Alison is a clinical professor at the NYU Stern School of Business and she is also the Executive Director of Ethical Systems. She spent the last two decades consulting with multinationals on anti-corruption, risk, human rights, stakeholder engagement, and ethics and compliance.

And she is the author of the fabulous new book, Higher Ground: How Business Can Do the Right Thing in a Turbulent World. And one of the reasons why I think it's a fabulous book is because it opens up a long overdue grown-up conversation about business in society. Alison takes on and challenges a number of pithy myths and notions that this stuff is always easy, and that there are always win-wins all over the place. The reality is, it's quite hard.

And whether we're talking about employee unrest over racial injustice, justice, supply chains, climate change, or bribery and fraud, some of the things that may seem obvious and easy are actually anything but - doing the right thing can be very confusing, and there are lots of traps associated with it, including balancing interests, what ethics really means, how the concepts of transparency and “zero tolerance” can get in the way, and Alison shares insights on some of these challenges.

We also talk about trust, which stakeholders companies should listen to, how the book has been received (and it's been received incredibly well, but as you will hear, you'll be surprised to learn where some of the pushback has come from) and so much more. This is a great conversation!

Show notes:

Higher Ground: How Business Can Do the Right Thing in a Turbulent World

Alison’s website

Alison on LinkedIn

Alison’s work with the World Economic Forum on the Rise and Role of the Chief Integrity Officer

Alison’s article “How to build an ethics program for a new era”

BSR

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Like what you heard?

Subscribe to All Things Risk wherever great podcasts are found: https://thedecisionmaking.studio/podcast

Learn more about The Decision-Making Studio

Join our “Decision Navigators” course (May 21, 2024 cohort now open)!

This “inbetweenisode” is based on the latest edition of our newsletter.

It’s all about uncertainty. After two and a half decades of working with decision-making under uncertainty, I have come to the following conclusion: uncertainty is about emotion.

Show notes:

Our latest newsletter: https://us19.campaign-archive.com/?u=f19fc74942b40b513cf66af32&id=1e2a6c0ea9

Scenario planning guide: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/ben-cattaneo_scenario-planning-taster-guide-activity-7200947403045175296-EXlT?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop

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Like what you heard?

Learn more about The Decision-Making Studio: https://thedecisionmaking.studio/

Subscribe to our podcast: https://thedecisionmaking.studio/podcast

Today, we spend some time in the world of marketing talking about how people make choices – and how behavioural science and AI can help us make better choices. My guest is Jen Clinehens. Jen is all about making business more human and is the founder of Choice Hacking, a consultancy that approaches customer experiences with a combination of behavioural science and psychology as well as cutting-edge AI tools.

Jen has a very interesting background and worldview – she spent time as a musician and in the creative industries before working in business and later founding Choice Hacking. We spend time talking about that, about how consumers make choices and what we can learn from that, the differences between marketing and manipulation, AI, and much more.

Show notes:

Jen Clinehens

Choice Hacking

Nike’s Michael Jordan ‘Failure’ ad

Market rotation

Noom

Duolingo

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Follow the podcast on Twitter: https://twitter.com/RiskThings

Drop us a note: [email protected]

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Our free course module “How to Set Up Any Decision for Success” from our upcoming course How to Make Decisions With Calm and Confidence

Today, we talk about how big things get done. A ‘big thing’ can mean a large infrastructure project, an IT project at work, or something in your personal life like a home renovation, a big adventure, or an event you’re organising. The sad truth is, the vast majority – in fact, almost – big projects end up over budget, delayed, and they don’t provide the planned benefits. This is something well-researched and backed up by data. It is the ‘Iron Law of Mega Projects’ as you will hear.

That’s the bad news.

The good news is that joining us on this episode of the podcast is Professor Bent Flyvbjerg who is the world’s leading megaproject expert. Prof. Flyvbjerg teaches at the University of Oxford and the IT University of Copenhagen. He has consulted on over 100 megaprojects costing $1 billion or more and has been knighted by the Queen of Denmark. He is the co-author of the fantastic new book How Big Things Get Done – The Surprising Factors Behind Every Successful Project From Home Renovations to Space Exploration.

Bent joins in what I think is a fabulous conversation in which he shares:

· The Iron Law of Mega Projects;

· Why projects ‘don’t go wrong, they start wrong’;

· Why projects are not goals in and of themselves and what we can learn from legendary architect Frank Gehry;

· What the Tour de France teaches up about risk;

· What lego has to do with all this;

· Much more!

Show notes:

Prof Bent Flyvbjerg

How Big Things Get Done

Bent on LinkedIn

Thinking, Fast and Slow

Availability bias

Frank Gehry

Pixar

The Bilbao Guggenheim

The Sydney Opera House

Reference Class Forecasting

Robert Caro on LBJ and Robert Moses

The Black Swan

Madrid Metro

SSRN

Academia.edu

_ _ _ _ _ _

Like what you heard?

Subscribe and/or leave a rating and review on Apple Podcasts: http://apple.co/1PjLmK

Subscribe on Stitcher: http://www.stitcher.com/podcast/all-things-risk/the-all-things-risk-podcast

Subscribe on Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/ben-cattaneo

Follow the podcast on Twitter: https://twitter.com/RiskThings

Drop us a note: [email protected]

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Our free course module “How to Set Up Any Decision for Success” from our upcoming course How to Make Decisions With Calm and Confidence