decisions Archives – Decision Fish: Decide For Yourself

Failing To Succeed: Use Design Thinking To Improve Your Strategy

Brett F. Whysel — Fri, 01 Feb 2019 17:54:51 +0000

Trump’s federal government shutdown, May’s Brexit proposal, Sears’ and Victoria’s Secret’s retail strategy, even my own struggling start-up: these are all examples of potentially failed strategies. These strategies might have had a chance had they been created using a little Design Thinking. This is a creative problem-solving process that eschews grand solutions in favor of an incremental, failure-welcoming, iterative ... Read more

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To-Do List Out Of Control? Try These 10 Stress-Busters

Brett F. Whysel — Tue, 25 Dec 2018 16:46:15 +0000

Do you get stressed around the holidays with just too much to do? Many of us feel more stress, anxiety and depression during the holidays. In addition to the normal demands of running a start-up and teaching, I’ve got presents to buy, travel to plan and a child to get to college. At last count, I ... Read more

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Time To Choose Your Health Insurance: Don’t Make A $9,000 Mistake

Brett F. Whysel — Tue, 18 Dec 2018 20:23:42 +0000

Is there any financial decision that we dread more than the annual chore of choosing a health insurance plan? It’s got everything we hate: choice and information overload, time pressure, ambiguity and confusion, consequences worth thousands, uncomfortable scenarios involving disease and injury, inscrutable jargon coming at a time of the year full of other business, ... Read more

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Facts & Logic Can Save Us (Please Let Them!)

Brett F. Whysel — Wed, 10 Oct 2018 21:59:35 +0000

Alternative facts and sloppy thinking. Either one can hijack our efforts to learn the truth and make quality decisions. Increasing political polarization, inequality and mistrust make it harder to reach consensus in politics, business, and society. This can slow human progress and result in catastrophic mistakes. A clear understanding of, and greater emphasis on, the ... Read more

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Will ‘Decisive’ Make You A Better Decision Maker?

Brett F. Whysel — Fri, 31 Aug 2018 15:41:22 +0000

“Do you know what you want?” Those six, dreaded words haunt my otherwise happy memory of a meal my friends and I enjoyed to celebrate graduating from university. It seemed such an important occasion: I wanted to get my menu selection exactly right. You can imagine the groans around the table after the third or fourth postponement ... Read more

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Trust Me: Why Trust Matters More than Ever (Part 1)

Brett F. Whysel — Mon, 30 Jul 2018 17:38:30 +0000

The other day, I invited a total stranger with a Ukrainian accent, “Victor,” whom I found on the Internet, to come into my house. Within 24 hours of my call, he was in my kitchen, fixing two appliances. I paid him $550 by personal check. Why did this work so well?An underlying level of trust in ... Read more

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3 Vicious Cycles: Links Among Financial, Physical and Mental Health

Brett F. Whysel — Wed, 11 Jul 2018 19:21:08 +0000

Feedback loops are powerful forces of nature. Melting polar ice caps reduce the earth’s reflectivity, causing it to absorb more heat from the sun, which accelerates the melting. The cumulative, accelerating aspects of such loops make it imperative to break the cycle before it gets out of control. Below, I identify three feedback loops among financial ... Read more

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Make Any Decision

Brett F. Whysel — Tue, 25 Jul 2017 12:01:33 +0000

Behavioral Economics (BE), a mash-up of psychology and economics, originally interested me because it promised a way to understand and predict mistakes that people make. This helped me do a better job as a banker to governments and nonprofits, because I could help them (and me) avoid those mistakes. It took a while for me to ... Read more

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The “Mystery” of Intuitive Decision Making

Brett F. Whysel — Tue, 27 Jun 2017 18:09:03 +0000

A High Stakes Hunch I had just got the news: the bank I worked for was going to sell the business I was supporting. This was going to be the seventh transition of my 27-year banking career. Should I try to find a new job in the industry or start my own business? Somehow, I ... Read more

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Nudges: For Your Own Good?

Brett F. Whysel — Mon, 17 Apr 2017 19:00:12 +0000

What do classical music in the train station, binge-inducing pre-loaded TV show episodes in Netflix, and those "I voted stickers" you get after voting have in common? Read our latest article, "Nudges: For Your Own Good?" about how government and businesses "nudge" your behavior for your own good...or maybe not (5 minute read).

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