Predictable Surprises

"Even the best-run companies can get blindsided by disasters they should have anticipated. These predictable surprises range from financial scandals to operational disruptions, from organizational upheavals to product failures. In Predictable Surprises, Max H. Bazerman and Michael D. Watkins show you how to minimize your risk by understanding and lowering the psychological, organizational, and political barriers preventing you from foreseeing calamity. They then describe the powerful tools--including incentives and formal coalitions--that business leaders can use to ferret out and fend off threats invisible to insiders. Failure to see what's coming exposes your company to predictable surprises. Given the stakes involved, this book should count among every business leader's most trusted resources."--Publisher's website.

In "The Predictable Surprise", Sylvester J. Schieber shows that forewarnings of the coming retirement crisis have been apparent for decades, but we have never mustered the political will to address the problem. This book explains how we have gotten into the retirement predicament and where we can go from here.

A “must-read” (Booklist) from Harvard Business School Professor and Codirector of the Harvard Kennedy School’s Center for Public Leadership: A guide to making better decisions, noticing important information in the world around you, and improving leadership skills. Imagine your advantage in negotiations, decision-making, and leadership if you could teach yourself to see and evaluate information that others overlook. The Power of Noticing provides the blueprint for accomplishing precisely that. Max Bazerman, an expert in the field of applied behavioral psychology, draws on three decades of research and his experience instructing Harvard Business School MBAs and corporate executives to teach you how to notice and act on information that may not be immediately obvious. Drawing on a wealth of real-world examples and using many of the same case studies and thought experiments designed in his executive MBA classes, Bazerman challenges you to explore your cognitive blind spots, identify any salient details you are programmed to miss, and then take steps to ensure it won’t happen again. His book provides a step-by-step guide to breaking bad habits and spotting the hidden details that will change your decision-making and leadership skills for the better, teaching you to pay attention to what didn’t happen, acknowledge self-interest, invent the third choice, and realize that what you see is not all there is. While many bestselling business books have explained how susceptible to manipulation our irrational cognitive blind spots make us, Bazerman helps you avoid the habits that lead to poor decisions and ineffective leadership in the first place. With The Power of Noticing at your side, you can learn how to notice what others miss, make wiser decisions, and lead more successfully.

Water is our most fundamental natural resource, a resource that is limited. Challenges to our nation's water resources continue to grow, driven by population growth, ecological needs, climate change, and other pressures. The nation needs more and improved water science and information to meet these challenges. Toward a Sustainable and Secure Water Future reviews the United States Geological Survey's (USGS) Water Resource Discipline (WRD), one of the nation's foremost water science organizations. This book provides constructive advice to help the WRD meet the nation's water needs over the coming decades. Of interest primarily to the leadership of the USGS WRD, many findings and recommendations also target the USGS leadership and the Department of Interior (DOI), because their support is necessary for the WRD to respond to the water needs of the nation.

An energy revolution is under way with far-reaching consequences for nations, companies, and the way we address climate change Low oil prices are sending shockwaves through the global economy, and longtime industry observer Dieter Helm explains how this and other shifts are the harbingers of a coming energy revolution and how the fossil fuel age will come to an end. Surveying recent surges in technological innovations, Helm’s provocative new book documents how the global move toward the internet-of-things will inexorably reduce the demand for oil, gas, and renewables—and prove more effective than current efforts to avert climate change. Oil companies and energy utilities must begin to adapt their existing business models or face future irrelevancy. Oil-exporting nations, particularly in the Middle East, will be negatively impacted, whereas the United States and European countries that are investing in new technologies may find themselves leaders in the geopolitical game. Timely and controversial, this book concludes by offering advice on what governments and businesses can and should do now to prepare for a radically different energy future.

How can the United States avoid a future surprise attack on the scale of 9/11 or Pearl Harbor, in an era when such devastating attacks can come not only from nation states, but also from terrorist groups or cyber enemies? Intelligence and Surprise Attack examines why surprise attacks often succeed even though, in most cases, warnings had been available beforehand. Erik J. Dahl challenges the conventional wisdom about intelligence failure, which holds that attacks succeed because important warnings get lost amid noise or because intelligence officials lack the imagination and collaboration to “connect the dots” of available information. Comparing cases of intelligence failure with intelligence success, Dahl finds that the key to success is not more imagination or better analysis, but better acquisition of precise, tactical-level intelligence combined with the presence of decision makers who are willing to listen to and act on the warnings they receive from their intelligence staff. The book offers a new understanding of classic cases of conventional and terrorist attacks such as Pearl Harbor, the Battle of Midway, and the bombings of US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. The book also presents a comprehensive analysis of the intelligence picture before the 9/11 attacks, making use of new information available since the publication of the 9/11 Commission Report and challenging some of that report’s findings.

Industry consolidation, mergers, changes to business models, the emergence of new threats all require managers to understand highly complex situations, assess risk and opportunity and make informed decisions. How can senior managers do this effectively when so often they are wrestling with brand new scenarios? One of the emerging solutions is business wargaming. Daniel F. Oriesek and Jan Oliver Schwarz provide the first comprehensive look at wargaming as a business tool in a book that explores the anatomy and success factors of a typical wargame. The authors explain how and when wargaming can be used to test strategies, plan and prepare for crises, manage change or increase your organization's ability to anticipate and adapt for the future. Creating imaginative and credible scenarios, and testing them against smart opponents who are eager to find holes and counter your strategy, allows you to learn about a plan or a new venture in the security of the conference room rather than learning the hard way when you go live. Business wargames are sophisticated but they are also very demanding in terms of time and resources. Business Wargaming: Securing Corporate Value will enable you to assess the potential value of the technique for your own organization, to understand what you will be committing to and develop an informed business case and brief for working with the organization that will facilitate the game.

This open access book provides a theoretical framework and case studies on decision science for regional sustainability by integrating the natural and social sciences. The cases discussed include solution-oriented transdisciplinary studies on the environment, disasters, health, governance and human cooperation. Based on these case studies and comprehensive reviews of relevant works, including lessons learned from past failures for predictable surprises and successes in adaptive co-management, the book provides the reader with new perspectives on how we can co-design collaborative projects with various conflicts of interest and how we can transform our society for a sustainable future. The book makes a valuable contribution to the global research initiative Future Earth, promoting transdisciplinary studies to bridge the gap between science and society in knowledge generation processes and supporting efforts to achieve the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Compared to other publications on transdisciplinary studies, this book is unique in that evolutionary biology is used as an integrator for various areas related to human decision-making, and approaches social changes as processes of adaptive learning and evolution. Given its scope, the book is highly recommended to all readers seeking an integrated overview of human decision-making in the context of social transformation.