Learn to Avoid Risk in Decision Making

November 12, 2009

Leaders in all fields, including the title insurance industry, make crucial decisions every day. The harsh truth is that they mismanage many of those choices, even though they have the right intentions. These blunders take a huge toll on leaders, their organizations and the people they serve. Why is it so hard to make sound decisions? We fall victim to simplified mental routines that prevent us from coping with the complex realities inherent in important judgment calls. Yet these cognitive errors are preventable. Title insurance industry professionals are encouraged to participate in a phone seminar titled “Think Twice! How to Recognize and Avoid Risk in Decision-Making” from noon to 1 p.m. Nov. 17 and listen to Michael J. Mauboussin, chief investment strategist at Legg Mason Capital Management, to learn how to recognize and avoid common mental missteps including:

  • Misunderstanding cause-and-effect linkages
  • Aggregating micro-level behavior to predict macro-level behavior
  • Not considering enough alternative possibilities in making a decision
  • Relying too much on experts
Sharing vivid stories from business and beyond, Mauboussin offers powerful rules for avoiding each error. And he explains how to know when it's time to think twice -- to question your reasoning and adopt decision-making strategies that are far more effective, even if they seem counterintuitive.

Master the art of thinking twice, and you'll start spotting dangerous mental errors in your own decisions and in those of others. Equipped with this awareness, you'll soon begin making sounder judgment calls for your organization.

Mauboussin is the author of More Than You Know: Finding Financial Wisdom in Unconventional Places-Updated and Expanded, named best business book by BusinessWeek and best economics book by Strategy+Business. He is also co-author of Expectations Investing: Reading Stock Prices for Better Returns. Mauboussin is on the Board of Trustees and Science Steering Committee at the Santa Fe Institute, a leading center for multi-disciplinary research in complex systems theory.

The event is sponsored by the Harvard Business Review.

To register, click here.


Contact ALTA at 202-296-3671 or [email protected].