My new article for Stanford Business:
Conquering Complexity With Simple Rules
A Stanford professor offers a better way to make decisions.
What do burglars, Stanford’s football team, and Federal Reserve chair Janet Yellen have in common?
They all use simple rules to help them navigate complex challenges, according to a new book by Stanford professor Kathleen Eisenhardt.
Many burglars follow just one rule that significantly lowers their risk of getting caught — they pass on houses where there are cars in the driveway, says the book, which Eisenhardt co-authored with Donald Sull, a senior lecturer at the MIT Sloan School of Business. Cardinal football players follow three simple dietary rules: Eat breakfast; stay hydrated; and eat as much as you want of anything that can be picked, plucked, or killed. And Yellen adopted a “mind the gap” rule which uses targets for unemployment and inflation to inform the Fed’s interest rate decisions.
Simple Rules: How to Thrive in a Complex World is counterintuitive in a time when algorithms and terabytes of data are often cited as prerequisites of decision-making. “How can people manage the complexity of the modern world?” the authors write. “Our answer, grounded in research and real-world results, is that simple rules tame complexity better than complex solutions.” ...read the rest here
Many burglars follow just one rule that significantly lowers their risk of getting caught — they pass on houses where there are cars in the driveway, says the book, which Eisenhardt co-authored with Donald Sull, a senior lecturer at the MIT Sloan School of Business. Cardinal football players follow three simple dietary rules: Eat breakfast; stay hydrated; and eat as much as you want of anything that can be picked, plucked, or killed. And Yellen adopted a “mind the gap” rule which uses targets for unemployment and inflation to inform the Fed’s interest rate decisions.
Simple Rules: How to Thrive in a Complex World is counterintuitive in a time when algorithms and terabytes of data are often cited as prerequisites of decision-making. “How can people manage the complexity of the modern world?” the authors write. “Our answer, grounded in research and real-world results, is that simple rules tame complexity better than complex solutions.” ...read the rest here
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