I’m not asking people to completely overhaul all decision-making, to ignore data or to reject facts.

By thinking in terms of user capability, opportunity and motivation to travel (and sometimes not-need-travel) we can (re)build more inclusive and resilient transport systems. However, he argues that in decisions where the definition of success involves some element of human perception, the solution has to allow for that. But, whether in the bar or the boardroom, I would like just 20 per cent of conversational time to be reserved for the consideration of alternative explanations, acknowledging the possibility that the real ‘why’ differs from the official ‘why’, and that our evolved rationality is very different from the economic idea of rationality.The Ogilvy advertising legend—“one of the leading minds in the world of branding” (NPR)—explores the art and science of conjuring irresistible products and ideas . A Management Consultant would define something narrowly, automate or streamline it, and then regard the savings as profit -- regardless of it's downside consequences.

They claim a monopoly on finding a solution to the problem and in so doing they fall into the trap of defining improvement too narrowly. Why do we think orange juice is healthy, and how does the same principle guide our feelings about nuclear reactors? Sutherland has a great gift for explaining things by often hilarious analogy, and it makes the book a genuine pleasure to read (in the author's language, he "scents the soap"), while it shows readers the benefits of pursuing the seemingly illogical, the non-obvious, the counter-intuitive. Originally published as a short story in 1916, "Obvious Adams" quickly became a handbook for those seeking their fortune in any industry. First, the Girardian nature of the book - Sutherland's thoughts on when to avoid what amounts to mimetic rivalry and when to harness it constitute a rare practical application of Girardian theory.You might think that people instinctively want to make the best decision, but there is a stronger force that animates business decision-making: the desire to not get fired or blamed. Irrational people are much more powerful than rational people, because their threats are so much more convincing. The author again and again sets up a 'logical' position that is nothing of the sort to prove his thesis that it's clever to appeal to people's irrational instincts and gut feelings. Rory Sutherland has described them before in his TED talks and on podcasts and he opens a spigot of real-world examples in his book.

There is a basic network effect in human decision making which can be lacking in economists’ models. There is no explanation of how come Japanese people like it (Japanese people aren't 'we'), or acknowledgement that maybe he just personally doesn't like miso soup: no, miso soup is a scam and you, a Western person, have bought into the scam because you've been suckered. While useful at tackling many problems, not least in the physical sciences, raw reason is not the best way to deal with problems of human behaviour. If you need to improve public transport service, the rational option is to invest in new roads, tracks, vehicles, stations -and this will set you back tens/hundreds of millions.His collection rivals that of Richard Thaler who outlined a list, in his book Misbehaving, of things people do that are inconsistent with the economists’ model of rational choice. It explains why we think the Parthenon has straight columns when closer inspection will reveal that it doesn’t. She yields her secrets to practitioners, almost never to academics - something psychologists, economists and non-skin in the game people, no matter what they say, are functionally unable to grasp.