The Naked Negotiator

Philip Tetlock, a psychologist at the University of California examined twenty-thousand forecasts made by three hundred experts, from sixty countries, delivered over fifteen years.

He found it was “impossible to find any domain in which humans clearly outperformed crude extrapolation algorithms, less still sophisticated, statistical ones”.

Tetlock’s research however shows there are a group of experts who are much better than their peers.

So, what distinguishes the best experts from the rest? What distinguishes an expert’s ability to forecast or predict well is how they think.

Tetlock split experts into two groups; hedgehogs and foxes. Hedgehogs know one big thing to try to explain everything through that lens. Foxes tend to know a little about a lot of things and are not married to a single explanation for complex problems.

Foxes are consistently better forecasters because they use “diverse sources of information”.

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Hermut Kormann, CEO of Voith, the world leader for water turbines doesn’t believe you need to be blindingly bright to be successful. It is sometimes enough o avoid the stupid mistakes others make or correct errors earlier.

Kormann’s theory “In order to be successful, you don’t have to be clever, it is sufficient not to be stupid.”

Mistakes can’t be avoided writes Hermann Simon in his insightful book, “Hidden Champions in the 21^st Century” but they can be corrected fast.”

I never fail to be amazed by the number of companies that keep making the same mistakes. All deals: the successful and the not so successful must be reviewed.

If the deal you have settled for is a Barely Acceptable Deal (BAD) ask why you didn’t achieve your Best Possible Agreement (BPA).

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