Date: 26 December 2021 Tags: Reading Time: 5 minutes Three types of empathy by Radu Atanasiu original drawing by Kira Atanasiu I wrote recently that empathy is the one ingredient that should not be absent from sensitive discussions between employer and employee. A […] Read more
Date: 18 November 2021 Tags: Reading Time: 4 minutes How do you talk to your employees about vaccination? By Radu Atanasiu Lately, there are two very sensitive topics on the agenda of employer-employee conversations. Topics related to the pandemic, topics that concern the personal life of the employees: […] Read more
Date: 11 November 2021 Tags: Reading Time: 3 minutes Simple rules. For running. And for managing people “In the beginning, train at a pace that allows you to talk, but not to sing” I started my book and I start each course with an analogy between managerial […] Read more
Date: 7 October 2021 Tags: Changing our minds, Critical Thinking, Persuasion Reading Time: 5 minutes The courage to change our minds (III) It seems that I have an obsession for mind changing, in general, and for this title, in particular. Six years ago, I published a first article with this title, writing […] Read more
Date: 20 July 2021 Tags: 5 whys, Decision making, ishikawa, root cause Reading Time: 5 minutes Why should we look for the root cause? Why? Why? Why? Why? ”There is always a well-known solution to every human problem — neat, plausible, and wrong.” (H. L. Mencken, Prejudices: Second Series, 1920) Often, managers apply solutions that fail because they […] Read more
Date: 7 May 2021 Tags: Reading Time: 6 minutes Training Our Managerial Thinking “For making smart decisions, critical thinking skills matter more than IQ” Adam Grant, Thinkers50 (number 8!) “You want me to study how to think and how to make business decisions? […] Read more
Date: 8 April 2021 Tags: Reading Time: 5 minutes The perfect solution fallacy In 1940 and 1941, Germany attempted to conquer Britain by airstrikes. The Battle of Britain ended well, the island resisted heroically and that turned the tide of World War II. […] Read more
Date: 24 March 2021 Tags: Reading Time: 4 minutes Why would they say no? Pre-mortem for persuasion This article first appeared in Romanian in Biz Magazine in March 2021. One of the main pastimes of managers is to persuade. To convince a client to buy their new […] Read more
Date: 21 December 2020 Tags: Reading Time: 4 minutes Group decisions while working from home This year’s pandemic has accelerated the natural trend towards remote work. The group decision-making process, which in many organizations was already cumbersome, now has a new dimension of complexity. While […] Read more
Date: 27 October 2020 Tags: Decision making, Leadership Reading Time: 5 minutes The myth of the rational manager This article appeared in September 2020 in Wall-Street.ro (Romanian version). Man is a rational animal. That’s what Aristotle says, so it must be true. And, taking the “manager” as the […] Read more
Date: 16 October 2020 Tags: Group decision making Reading Time: 4 minutes Roles in group decisions I ended the article in the last issue of Revista BIZ by writing that, in group decisions, the clarity of roles is crucial. Roles in a team are not fixed, […] Read more
Date: 17 September 2020 Tags: Decision making, Group decision making Reading Time: 4 minutes Group decisions This article appeared in September 2020, in Romanian, in BIZ It’s said that two heads are better than one, meaning that a group thinks better and makes wiser decisions than […] Read more
Date: 17 July 2020 Tags: Decision making, Intuition Reading Time: 5 minutes Managerial intuition This article appeared in July 2020, in Romanian, in Biz Magazine Despite the mistrust we have towards it, managerial intuition is a valuable tool for making decisions when it springs […] Read more
Date: 5 June 2020 Tags: Growth, Personal development Reading Time: 4 minutes Why invest in yourself in times of crisis This article appeared in June 2020, in Romanian, in start-up.ro If you want to enroll in an MBA this year, I have a better idea. Start now a new business […] Read more
Date: 17 April 2020 Tags: Decision making Reading Time: < 1 minute Decision-making in times of crisis Few businesses have continued through March, April, and May without a major change. Most have slowed down because of the restrictions, some have picked up. These peculiar months have influenced […] Read more
Date: 22 March 2020 Tags: Biases, Decision making Reading Time: 4 minutes The courage to change our minds (II) This article appeared in March 2020, in Romanian, in BIZ magazine Five years ago, I wrote an article in Biz Magazine entitled “The courage to change our minds”, in which […] Read more
Date: 17 March 2020 Tags: Growth Reading Time: 3 minutes How to tackle the pandemic crisis This article appeared in March 2020, in Romanian, in BIZ magazine The current crisis is advancing at a hallucinatory pace. I am writing this article on March 23, and yesterday […] Read more
Date: 17 January 2020 Tags: decision tools Reading Time: 7 minutes On simple rules This article appeared in January 2020, in Romanian, in BIZ magazine Managers and companies learn mostly from failure. Both management studies and famous CEOs have shown that learning from failure […] Read more
Date: 23 November 2019 Tags: Entrepreneurship, Investor relations, Start ups Reading Time: 4 minutes On the fine-tuning startup founders must constantly take care of This article appeared in November 2019, in Romanian, in BIZ Magazine The Goldilocks principle is derived from a children’s story in which a little girl tastes from different bowls and […] Read more
Date: 17 October 2019 Tags: Decision making Reading Time: 7 minutes On the benefits of writing things down in decision-making This article appeared in October 2019, in Romanian, in BIZ Magazine Words have power. I am not writing about the (obvious) power in interpersonal communication today, but about the major […] Read more
Date: 17 August 2019 Tags: Biases, Decision making Reading Time: 4 minutes Why are water molecules not wet? This article appeared in August 2019, in Romanian, in Biz Magazine I have written in past issues of Biz about common thinking errors, about how such errors lead to business […] Read more
Date: 18 May 2019 Tags: Empathy, Persuasion Reading Time: 6 minutes On the use of empathy in persuasion This article appeared in May 2019, in Romanian, in BIZ Magazine In the 80’s I read in the “Cinema” magazine a joke that fascinated me: “Honey, if you were Iurie […] Read more
Date: 6 May 2019 Tags: Pre-mortem analysis Reading Time: 5 minutes On pre-mortem This article appeared in May 2019, in Romanian, in BIZ Magazine Memento mori! The meditation on your own death, a central practice of Stoicism, Buddhism, Christian and Islamic philosophy, can […] Read more
Date: 15 January 2019 Tags: Decision making Reading Time: 4 minutes On business decision making This article appeared in January 2019, in Romanian, in BIZ Magazine The beginning of the new year is a good time for an analysis of last year’s decisions and for […] Read more
Date: 8 June 2018 Tags: Biases, Loss Aversion Reading Time: 5 minutes On loss aversion This article appeared in June 2018, in Romanian, in BIZ Magazine The key to Jimmy Connors’ success (ATP No. 1 for 268 weeks, of which 160 – three years! – […] Read more
Date: 24 March 2018 Tags: Sunk cost Reading Time: 3 minutes On sunk cost effect This article appeared in March 2018, in Romanian, in BIZ Magazine Why do we continue a bankrupt project just because we have already invested a lot of money, time, effort […] Read more
Date: 30 September 2017 Tags: Micromanagement Reading Time: 4 minutes On Pygmalion Effect and Dunning-Kruger Effect in micromanagement This article appeared in September 2017, in Romanian, in BIZ Magazine “The best executive is the one who has sense enough to pick good men to do what he wants […] Read more
Date: 10 June 2017 Tags: Decision making, Heuristics, Mental shortcuts Reading Time: 7 minutes On the use of heuristics in business | Reason and feeling in business | This article appeared in June 2017, in Romanian, in BIZ Magazine It’s a universally accepted truth that a CEO must make decisions using […] Read more
Date: 29 January 2017 Tags: post-truth Reading Time: 2 minutes On post-truth This article appeared in January 2017, in Romanian, in VICE magazine Post-truth is not persuasion by falsehood, as it may seem at first glance. It’s persuasion through emotion. The lie […] Read more
Date: 17 October 2016 Tags: Society Reading Time: 4 minutes On a theoretical model for the Romanian society This article appeared in October 2016, in Romanian, in Adevarul.ro I will describe a theoretical evolution model of a bird population. If I manage to hold your attention up to […] Read more
Date: 12 July 2015 Tags: Arguments, Biases, Convictions Reading Time: 8 minutes The courage to change our minds (I) This article appeared in July 2015, in Romanian, in BIZ Magazine A little flexibility is good in life, career and even in business. Or, like Groucho Marx said: “Those are […] Read more
Date: 27 August 2014 Tags: Politics, Society Reading Time: 3 minutes On thinking traps in deciding who to vote for This article appeared in August 2014, in Romanian, in Adevarul.ro “To attain knowledge, add things everyday. To attain wisdom, remove things every day.” Lao Tse That’s what Lao Tse taught […] Read more
Date: 19 October 2013 Tags: Politics, Society Reading Time: 5 minutes On the global democratization trend in knowledge, news, financing and so on | Misunderstood democracy | This article appeared in October 2013, in Romanian, in Adevarul.ro The nostalgic quote from Ion Iliescu that I used as a title is a cheap trick […] Read more
Date: 23 September 2013 Tags: Society, Trust Reading Time: 4 minutes On the Pygmalion effect This article appeared in September 2013, in Romanian, in Adevarul.ro Treat people the way you want them to be, not the way they are now, and they will change accordingly. […] Read more
Date: 6 July 2013 Tags: Change management, Society Reading Time: 3 minutes On a non-linear change hypothesis for Romanian society This article appeared in July 2013, in Romanian, in Adevarul.ro It seems to me that personal development is in trending, it’s dans l’air du temps, like running or cycling through […] Read more
Date: 1 July 2013 Tags: Society Reading Time: 3 minutes On the tragedy of the commons This article appeared in July 2013, in Romanian, in Wall-Street Introduction: Usually, the concept of tragedy of the commons is related to the disappearance of fish from the oceans, global […] Read more