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Do We Know How To Learn?

Professor Sydney Finkelstein Steven Roth Professor of ManagementAssociate Dean for Executive Education

Tuck School of Business at DartmouthTelephone: (603) 646-2864sydney.finkelstein@dartmouth.edu

Twitter: @sydfinkelsteinWebsite: http://faculty.tuck.dartmouth.edu/sydney-finkelstein/

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How Smart Professors Learn

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Inability to Learn

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Unwillingness to Learn

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Intellectual Honesty

• Fresh strategic thinking requires you to challenge history, and break the rules.

• Leaders almost always know what needs to change. In failing organizations, they don’t do it.

• It’s not that people are unable to change, it’s that they are unwilling to change.

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Four Red Flags in How We Make Decisions

Are your personal experiences misleading you?

Is your personal self-interest clouding your thinking?

Have you made a dangerous pre-judgment that you are locked into?

Are inappropriate attachments pushing you in the wrong direction?

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US Airways Flight 1549

Captain Chelsey Sullenberger

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US Airways Flight 1549

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Is Experience a Good Thing?

Sully was an experienced pilot.

Sully was an experienced accident investigator.

Sully was a certified glider pilot.

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Four Red Flags in How We Make Decisions

Are your personal experiences misleading you?

Is your personal self-interest clouding your thinking?

Have you made a dangerous pre-judgment that you are locked into?

Are inappropriate attachments pushing you in the wrong direction?

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Dangerous Pre-judgments

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FEMA highlights concerns:

New Orleans is below sea

level

6:00amBroderick’s staff report:

“multiple breaches, downtown flooded”

6:00pmBroderick

issues report to Chertoff: “levees

not breached”

– goes home

Friday Saturday

TuesdayMonday

8:13am Broderick suggests

6am report may be

exaggerated

2:30pm Broderic

k confirms levees

breached

Katrina hits: First

reports of levee

breaches 8.30am

Sunday

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Can Deficits on Self-Awareness Trump Extreme Competence?

Misleading experience: Military experience different, but “been there, done that”

Dangerous pre-judgment: Made early decision that Katrina was a “normal” hurricane

Inappropriate attachment: To the military, and against local sources of information

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Do We Know How To Learn?

Professor Sydney Finkelstein Steven Roth Professor of ManagementAssociate Dean for Executive Education

Tuck School of Business at DartmouthTelephone: (603) 646-2864sydney.finkelstein@dartmouth.edu

Twitter: @sydfinkelsteinWebsite: http://faculty.tuck.dartmouth.edu/sydney-finkelstein/