Never Go With Your Gut

“This book is Moneyball for management. It will help you understand your subconscious biases that can lead to bad decisions, and it will teach you the techniques to help you make better decisions.” —Gordon Tredgold, author of Fast

“This well-written, go-against-the-grain book is full of practical ways to tap into your very best mental resources to make better and better decisions.” —Brian Tracy, bestselling author of Eat that Frog!

Want to avoid business disasters, whether minor mishaps, such as excessive team conflict, or major calamities like those that threaten bankruptcy or doom a promising career? Fortunately, behavioral economics studies show that such disasters stem from poor decisions due to our faulty mental patterns—what scholars call “cognitive biases”—and are preventable.

Unfortunately, the typical advice for business leaders to “go with their guts” plays into these cognitive biases and leads to disastrous decisions that devastate the bottom line. By combining practical case studies with cutting-edge research, Never Go With Your Gut will help you make the best decisions and prevent these business disasters.

The leading expert on avoiding business disasters, Dr. Gleb Tsipursky, draws on over 20 years of extensive consulting, coaching, and speaking experience to show how pioneering leaders and organizations—many of them his clients—avoid business disasters. Reading this book will enable you to:

• Discover how pioneering leaders and organizations address cognitive biases to avoid disastrous decisions.
• Adapt best practices on avoiding business disasters from these leaders and organizations to your own context.
• Develop processes that empower everyone in your organization to avoid business disasters.

“The research literature is loaded with dozens of cognitive biases that convincingly demonstrate the folly of going with your gut. Gleb Tsipursky picks up where the research leaves off and provides us with a compelling set of alternative decision-making strategies that are far more likely to lead to positive outcomes. Before you find yourself about to make another gut-based decision that will surely end badly you must take the time to read this book. It will save you from yourself!” —Leonard A. Schlesinger, PhD, Vice Chairman and COO Emeritus at Limited Brands, Baker Foundation Professor at Harvard Business School, President Emeritus of Babson College, and bestselling author of Just Start

“Gleb Tsipursky has written a highly readable and engaging book that describes effective strategies for overcoming the cognitive biases that impair our decision making every day. Business leaders can and should implement these practices so as to avoid the costly mistakes that often lead to disastrous outcomes for their enterprises.” —Michael A. Roberto, author of Unlocking Creativity and Trustee Professor of Management, Bryant University

“Never Go With Your Gut provides ample scientific as well as anecdotal evidence that making gut decisions in business, with today’s access to real information and experts, is a fool’s errand. In my advisory role, I’ve seen it too many times as a leading cause for entrepreneur failure or embarrassment. Thanks for making a convincing case that every business founder should read.” —Marty Zwilling, Founder & CEO of Startup Professionals, Inc., author of StartupPro, and Professor at Embry-Riddle University

“This book is Moneyball for management. It will help you understand your subconscious biases that can lead to bad decisions, and it will teach you the techniques to help you make better decisions which will lead to a better business. Excellent book every leader must read!” —Gordon Tredgold, author of Fast, Founder & CEO of Leadership Principles, Professor of Business, Economics and Law at Staffordshire University

“This book is a MUST-READ for any decision makers who want to reduce the risk of business failures! I have seen many leaders make terrible decisions because they followed the traditional advice of ‘listen to your gut.’ Tsipursky’s book explains in detail all cognitive biases that affect the ‘gut’ based decision making style. Gleb explores and explains pragmatic, effective, and research-based strategies to avoid the dangerous judgment errors that result from gut-based biases and lead to such business failures. His book is written in a casual and engaging style and is easy to read: it will help anyone be a much better decision maker. Get a copy for everyone in your organization!” —Lorenzo Delpani, former CEO of Revlon and other companies, Angel Investor and Entrepreneur

“One of the biggest traps business leaders fall into is when they believe they are right when in fact they are very wrong. Why? Because of their blissful unawareness of how cognitive biases keep steering them down dangerous paths. Gleb Tsipursky has written the perfect book to fight back. No one reading this engaging and practical book can walk away believing they are immune to bias; anyone reading this book will now be armed with practical techniques to stop making the same mistakes over and over again.” —Sydney Finkelstein, professor of leadership at Dartmouth College, bestselling author, Superbosses, and host of the new podcast, The Sydcas

“The antidote for a hustle economy run by the seat of your pants, Dr. Tsipursky carves a rational path forward for business strategy based on data, insight and proven best practices.” —Mark Schaefer, author of Marketing Rebellion

“In a world where propaganda masking as news has become a geopolitical tool, where people are fed a daily diet of stories designed to enrage them, and where tribalism and ideologically driven animosity seem to be mainstream culture, Dr. Gleb Tsipursky’s work offers hope in its most functional form – calm, fact-focused, reason. His material, while fascinating and prescient in today’s political climate, also holds more immediate, practical application for someone like me. My job, running a business that revolves around training athletes to win, is a case study in meritocracy. And in that world the correct application of objective reason isn’t optional for long term success, it is required.” —Matt Thornton, Owner and Founder, Straight Blast Gym International Brazilian Jiu Jitsu Association

“In an era where hasty decision making and intuition have become the rage, Gleb brings us back to more rational decision making and leadership behaviors that are proven to yield higher success and results.” —Mark Faust, Founder of Echelon Management and author, High Growth Levers

“Avoid business disasters by reading this enjoyably insightful book. Gleb Tsipursky first combines cutting-edge research and pragmatic case studies to prove convincingly how trusting your gut can lead to dangerous judgment errors. Then, Gleb offers practical and effective strategies that leaders can adopt immediately to help themselves and their teams make the best decisions to address potential threats and seize unexpected opportunities. I wish this book had been published earlier in my career — and I recommend it to all leaders I know.” —Artie Isaac, Leader of CEO Peer Groups, former CEO of Young Isaac

“As CEO of an investment management firm operating in 34 countries, I deal daily with the threat of financial disasters, and Gleb's book will help me improve my ability to avoid these threats by using the guidance Gleb offers. When reading the book, I was especially struck by the process Gleb provides for disaster planning. A firm can be ready or a firm can think it’s ready, but Gleb's book provides guidance for a firm to prepare itself in a manner I have not come across previously. This is a must read for any CEO or C suite executive! After all, every organization should have some playbook for disaster scenarios and Gleb has provided solutions that can be adopted all over the world.” —Alexander Fleiss, CEO of Rebellion Research
 

About the Author:
Dr. Gleb Tsipursky serves as the CEO of the boutique consulting firm Disaster Avoidance Experts, whose clients range from Fortune 500 companies to mid-size businesses and nonprofits. Tsipursky’s expertise stems from 20 years of consulting, coaching, and speaking across three continents. He lives in Columbus, Ohio.