How You’ll Know There’s a Problem Sometimes employees’ financial stresses get so intense, they become unavoidable management issues. They can reduce productivity and engagement and increase turnover, healthcare utilization, absenteeism and worse. Employers’ resources for addressing this kind of issue are typically very limited. It’s not unheard of for employees to directly ask their managers … Read more
I recently visited with a 27 year old who asked me for help in figuring out what to do with his life. He is about to start at a prestigious graduate school and is feeling pressure to make some big career decisions quickly. Here’s the letter I wrote him, inspired by Seneca’s Letters from a Stoic. Before you … Read more
I’ve got a wickedly complex decision to make. What should my priorities be now that I no longer have a full-time banking job? I’ve got at least a dozen different alternatives, each with subtle-to-obvious differences with respect to my key values including impact on my family, benefit to society, intellectual challenge, financial security and leverage of … Read more
We can we improve our ability to make wise choices in business and personal life by better understanding our brains and setting up conditions conducive to good decision-making. A good example is when we are confronted with a major life decision such as whether to seek (or accept) a new job. While few would argue this … Read more
The New York Times published a great, short article, complete with quiz, about confirmation bias. Confirmation bias is our innate preference to have our expectations, prejudices and assumptions confirmed. We can pay attention to confirming evidence and ignore contradicting evidence. The article measures this bias with a short quiz and argues that, when making a decision … Read more