26 Posts found for Source: McKinsey Quarterly

[Daniel Kahneman’s] central message could not be more important, namely, that human reason left to its own devices is apt to engage in a number of fallacies and systematic errors, so if we want to make better decisions in our personal lives and as a society, we ought to be aware of these biases and seek workarounds. That’s a powerful and important discovery.

Authors: Daniel Kahneman, Steven Pinker | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subjects: Life & Society, Personal Improvement, Psychology | Behavior

When you realize you probably have enough, you become much less anxious about uncertainty: you think, “I could try something new, I have enough,” rather than, “How do I get more?”

Author: Nathan Furr | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subjects: Life & Society, Material Possessions, Personal Improvement, Psychology | Behavior

I have this phrase going through my head a lot: each of us, in some sense, is the hero of our own life. We all have a narrative that puts us in a better light than others might see us in. So I try to remember this when I see others act in ways that I wish they hadn’t.

Author: Cass Sunstein | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subjects: Personal Improvement, Psychology | Behavior

Sometimes leaders, whether political or scientific, get so caught up in the momentum of history that they become a part of the machinery, of the history of the world, that they almost lose their agency in the process.

Author: Moshik Temkin | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subjects: History, Leadership, Politics & Public Policy

If you are defensive, you’re obsessed with being right. If you are open, you’re obsessed with getting it right.

Author: Andrew McAfee | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subjects: Personal Improvement, Psychology | Behavior

Seek the company of those who search for truth. Run from those who have found it.

Author: Andrew McAfee | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subjects: Education | Scholarship, Personal Improvement

For us, ultra-social human beings, all you need to do to maintain a culture is put in place the pain of social exclusion. Follow the norms, and if you don’t, we’re not going to beat you to a pulp. We’re just going to exclude you. That is legitimately and truly painful to human beings. That’s the glue that holds human cultures together, is that threat … [ Read more ]

Author: Andrew McAfee | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subjects: Life & Society, Psychology | Behavior, Relationships, Sociology | Anthropology

Most conversations fall into one of three buckets: emotional, practical, and social. In emotional conversations, we want to talk about our feelings. In practical conversations, we want to solve a problem or create a plan together, and in social, we want to talk about how we relate to each other and how society relates to us.

Author: Charles Duhigg | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subjects: Communication, Personal Improvement, Psychology | Behavior, Relationships

Success breeds complacency. Complacency breeds failure.

Author: Andy Grove | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subjects: Personal Improvement, Success / Failure

Empathy comes not from the things we say but from the questions we ask and the way that we pay attention.

Author: Jamil Zaki | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subjects: Personal Improvement, Psychology | Behavior

Empathy is an experience. Kindness is a behavior. Kindness is the things we do for other people. There are lots of reasons you might act kindly. You might help your friend move because you owe them. Or you might help them because you care for them. In the second case, it’s empathy that’s leading to kindness. And there are all sorts of evidence that when … [ Read more ]

Author: Jamil Zaki | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subject: Psychology | Behavior

How do we cover these issues wherein opinion is extremely polarized but wherein our best judgment is that the truth lies more with one side. In general, the way we cover things is we quote people from one side and the other, and it’s a marketplace of ideas. We let the public decide where the truth lies, but there have been times when that model … [ Read more ]

Author: Nicholas D. Kristof | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subject: Journalism

Larry Summers said that events are mostly negative and trends are mostly positive. Well, we [the news] cover events. If we want to be the first rough draft of history, it’s worthwhile to do a better job covering those positive trends.

Authors: Larry Summers, Nicholas D. Kristof | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subjects: Education | Scholarship, History, Journalism, Life & Society

Pattern recognition is why our brains are amazing… Our brains look for patterns to simplify decision making. It can also mean we look for patterns when there may not be one for a particular issue. Alternatively, we may encounter a pattern and draw probable but incorrect conclusions. This explains why we buy into conspiracy theories or walk around our living room looking for our phone … [ Read more ]

Author: Elspeth Kirkman | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subjects: Education | Scholarship, Personal Improvement, Psychology | Behavior, Thought | Inquiry

When there’s trade liberalization and globalization, there are always winners and losers. It’s not as if everyone is better off. Say if we buy more cheap goods from China, where there’s a larger labor supply and wages are lower, rapid productivity, the jobs and incomes up, work, as in labor-intensive industries like some light manufacturing in Europe or US get displaced.

That’s part of the globalization … [ Read more ]

Author: Nouriel Roubini | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subjects: Economics | Economy, Environment | Sustainability

Sometimes borrowing makes sense, to borrow to invest into something productive. But if you borrow just to consume, then eventually you get in trouble and your debt ratios become too high relative to your need to pay back your debts over time. It could be a problem for households, for the business sector, financial institutions, for governments, for a country as a whole.

Author: Nouriel Roubini | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subjects: Finance | Investing, Personal Improvement

Take your jobs and your responsibilities very seriously, but don’t take yourselves too seriously.

Author: Judith Persichilli | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subjects: Life & Society, Personal Improvement

We are meaning-making creatures. We are quick to tell ourselves stories. And in those stories, we often cast ourselves as the hero and the other person as the villain because it’s an easy shortcut. It’s an easy trope, but it’s often not the full story.

Author: Amy Gallo | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subjects: Personal Improvement, Psychology | Behavior

Our brain perceives conflict as a threat, and our brain doesn’t do a good job of distinguishing between a small threat, like someone rolling their eyes at us, and a big threat, like being chased down by a bear. We often don’t make good choices in those moments because, in fight or flight mode, there’s really two options: I can shut down, or I can … [ Read more ]

Author: Amy Gallo | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subject: Psychology | Behavior

If you look at the actual budget breakdown, it tends to be that 1 percent is allocated to preventative health. I think that’s a bit of an underestimate because, you know, for things like cancer screening, et cetera, that would also count as preventative. But it’s still a small minority and a lot less than it needs to be.

This is the great pivot that needs … [ Read more ]

Author: Andrew Scott | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subjects: Health & Medicine, Politics & Public Policy