THE EO BLOG

Search

Search for:

Tagged: Dr. Gleb Tsipursky

How to foster serendipitous innovation in hybrid and remote teams

28 January, 2022

Dr. Gleb Tsipursky is CEO of the boutique future-proofing consultancy Disaster Avoidance Experts, which helps forward-looking leaders avoid dangerous threats and missed opportunities. A best-selling author, his newest book is Returning to the Office and Leading Hybrid and Remote Teams: A Manual on Benchmarking to Best Practices for Competitive Advantage. We asked Dr. Tsipursky how leaders can emulate the spontaneity of in-person employee idea generation for hybrid and remote teams. Here’s what he shared:

When leaders weigh the pros and cons of remote teams versus in-person work, one topic of concern is the water cooler effect.

In office environments, employees from different departments often run into each other, spark conversations about their individual projects, and spontaneously generate what could be game-changing ideas for the company.

“I don’t see how we can replace the serendipitous idea generation of hallway conversations. If we don’t return to the office full-time, we’re going to lose out to rivals who do so and gain the benefits of serendipity.” That’s what “Saul,” chief product officer of a 1,500-employee enterprise software company, told me at his company’s planning meeting on the post-vaccine return to office.

I told Saul that this is a common issue among organizations, and one that can only be addressed by adopting best practices for innovation in the return to the office and the future of work.

Categories: Best Practices Company Culture Crisis INNOVATION PEOPLE/STAFF

Tags: Disaster Avoidance Experts Dr. Gleb Tsipursky Gleb Tsipursky

How to prevent negotiation failure

30 June, 2021

Contributed by Dr. Gleb Tsipursky, CEO of Disaster Avoidance Experts.

One of an entrepreneur’s go-to tools for business growth and success is the art of negotiation. However, because of the many nuances that affect each stage of negotiation, it can be a tricky skill to master.

Negotiators, even professional ones, make a surprising number of wrong decisions that doom negotiations which should have succeeded. Many such mistakes relate to overestimating how well they can read the feelings and thoughts of other parties in the negotiation, as well as the extent to which the other party can read their feelings and thoughts.

For instance, research shows that negotiators who sought to conceal their desires did a better job than they thought they did. In turn, those who tried to convey information to those they negotiated with about their preferences overestimated their abilities to communicate such knowledge. Other scholarship shows that negotiators with less power are more prone to such mistakes than those with more power.

Categories: Best Practices Guest contributors STRATEGY

Tags: cognitive bias Disaster Avoidance Experts Dr. Gleb Tsipursky Gleb Tsipursky negotiation strategy

8 Steps to Making Better Business Decisions

2 March, 2020

Contributed by Dr. Gleb Tsipursky, disaster avoidance expert, speaker and author.

History’s headlines are filled with examples of companies brought to their knees by bad decision making.

Decca Records famously turned down the Beatles. Motorola chose not to make smartphones. Elon Musk tweeted about taking Uber private and plummeted his company into chaos. Boeing’s leadership made some terrible decisions to cover up problems and rush production of the 737 Max. In all cases, their competitors took advantage of these failures to seize market share.

Good decision making is the essence of successful leadership, which is why the term “leader” is often equated to “decision-maker.” Tragically, too many leaders get it wrong. It’s not a matter of luck or timing.

Disasters happen when leaders go with their gut. The process of decision making is anything but intuitive, because our brain is wired to make terrible decisions in the modern professional environment. After all, our mind is adapted for the tribal savanna, not the globalized, digitalized business world of today.

Categories: BUSINESS GROWTH INNOVATION LEADERSHIP

Tags: business decisions cognitive bias decision making Dr. Gleb Tsipursky

How to Avoid Losing When Your Enterprise Grows

29 January, 2020

Contributed by Dr. Gleb Tsipursky.

One of the biggest dangers for entrepreneurs comes when their enterprise grows from being a small shop of 10 people to a midsized company of 100 or more. Entrepreneurial decision-making must change to account for this growth, but it often doesn’t due to our desire to avoid losses.

To illustrate why, let me tell you a story.

It’s your lucky day! You meet a kind stranger who offers you something for nothing. No tricks, really: You’re getting a free lunch.

She gives you US$45. Then she asks if you want to keep that money or give it to her in exchange for a coin flip. If it lands heads up, she’ll give you US$100. If it’s tails, you get nothing.

Which do you choose? Do you want US$45 cash in your pocket or are you willing to take a chance with the coin flip? Decide before reading further.

Categories: BUSINESS GROWTH OPERATIONS PEOPLE/STAFF STRATEGY

Tags: cognitive bias decision making Disaster Avoidance Experts Dr. Gleb Tsipursky

The Curse That Causes Promotions to Fail

4 December, 2019

Written for EO by Dr. Gleb Tsipursky, disaster avoidance expert, speaker and author.

It’s tragically common for people in organizations to be promoted up the hierarchy to their “level of incompetence,” a concept in management known as the Peter Principle. They are promoted because they did well in their previous job, not based on their potential to meet the needs of the new position into which they are placed, even when the new role requires a wholly different set of skills. Moreover, there’s often no training for the new skills they need to learn to succeed in their new position.

This combination of poor promotion practices and lack of training stem largely from a dangerous judgment error known as the curse of knowledge, referring to the fact that when we learn something, we face great difficulty in relating to someone who doesn’t know it.

In other words, once we gain a set of skills, such as in managing others, we tend to forget what it feels like to lack these abilities; once we acquire relevant knowledge, such as the jargon of our profession, we tend to use it to speak to those who don’t know this jargon, and then wonder why they fail to understand.

As a result, we have difficulties communicating with others about our professional activities, teaching them the skills they need to learn, and collaborating with them in professional settings.

The curse of knowledge error comes from how our brains are wired. It represents one of the many dangerous judgment errors that scholars in cognitive neuroscience and behavioral economics call cognitive biases.

Categories: BUSINESS GROWTH LEADERSHIP PEOPLE/STAFF

Tags: cognitive bias curse of knowledge disaster avoidance expert Dr. Gleb Tsipursky Peter Principle training

How to Deal With Colleagues in Denial

13 November, 2019

Written for EO by Dr. Gleb Tsipursky, disaster avoidance expert, speaker and author.

When was the last time a colleague said something so ridiculous that it made your jaw drop? A four-year study by LeadershipIQ.com found that 23 percent of CEOs were fired for denying reality, meaning refusing to recognize negative facts about his or her organization’s performance.

Entrepreneurs typically respond when people deny reality by confronting them with the facts and arguments. But research suggests that’s exactly the wrong thing to do.

Research on confirmation bias shows that we tend to look for and interpret information in ways that conform to our beliefs. There is an emotional investment in continuing to believe what you want to believe. Furthermore, studies on a phenomenon called the backfire effect indicate that when we are presented with facts that cause us to feel bad about our self-worth or worldview, we may sometimes even develop a stronger attachment to the incorrect belief.

These mental blindspots are two of over 100 dangerous judgment errors that result from how our brains are wired—what scholars in cognitive neuroscience and behavioral economics call cognitive biases. Fortunately, recent research in these fields shows how you can use pragmatic strategies to address these dangerous judgment errors in your professional life.

Rather than arguing, it is much more effective to use a research-based strategy I developed called EGRIP (Emotions, Goals, Rapport, Information, Positive Reinforcement), which provides clear guidelines on how to deal with people who deny the facts.

Categories: BUSINESS GROWTH LEADERSHIP PEOPLE/STAFF STRATEGY

Tags: confirmation bias denial denying reality Dr. Gleb Tsipursky EGRIP

Are You Falling for the Myth of “Failing to Plan is Planning to Fail”?

4 October, 2019

Written for EO by Dr. Gleb Tsipursky, disaster avoidance expert, speaker and author.

You probably heard the advice for entrepreneurs that “failing to plan is planning to fail.” That phrase is a misleading myth at best and actively dangerous at worst. Making plans is important, but our gut reaction is to plan for the best-case outcomes, ignoring the high likelihood that things will go wrong.

A much better phrase is “failing to plan for problems is planning to fail.” To address the very high likelihood that problems will crop up, you need to plan for contingencies.

When was the last time you saw a major planned project suffer from a cost overrun? It’s not as common as you might think for a project with a clear plan to come in at or under budget.

For instance, a 2002 study of major construction projects found that 86 percent went over budget. In turn, a 2014 study of IT projects found that only 16.2 percent succeeded in meeting the originally planned resource expenditure. Of the 83.8 percent of projects that did not, the average IT project suffered from a cost overrun of 189 percent.

Going over budget can seriously damage your bottom line. Imagine if a serious IT project such as implementing a new database at your organization goes even 50 percent over budget, which is much less than the average cost overrun. You might be facing many thousands or even millions of dollars in unplanned expenses, causing you to draw on funds assigned for other purposes and harming all of your plans going forward.

What explains cost overruns? They largely stem from the planning fallacy, our intuitive belief that everything will go according to plan, whether in IT projects or in other areas of business and life.

Categories: BUSINESS GROWTH OPERATIONS

Tags: budget Dr. Gleb Tsipursky overrun planning fallacy project management

Should Entrepreneurs Trust Their Gut?

21 August, 2019

Written for EO by Dr. Gleb Tsipursky, disaster avoidance expert, speaker and author.

Decision-making research shows that many entrepreneurs don’t know when to rely on their gut instincts and when to follow reason. Here’s a pop quiz for you:

Let’s say you’re interviewing a new applicant for a job and the interview feels a little off. You can’t quite put your finger on it, but you’re uncomfortable talking with this person. She says all the right things, her resume is great, she seems like a perfect hire—except your gut tells you otherwise.

Should you go with your gut?

Categories: INNOVATION LEADERSHIP PEOPLE/STAFF

Tags: decision making Disaster Avoidance Experts Dr. Gleb Tsipursky gut instinct Never Go With Your Gut