



The Power of Noticing
What the Best Leaders See
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4.0 • 4 Ratings
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- $13.99
Publisher Description
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.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this book that will suit fans of Dan Ariely and Malcolm Gladwell, Harvard Business School professor Bazerman (coauthor of Blind Spots) describes how we fail to notice the most important details around us. As Bazerman notes, when we analyze a particular problem, we tend to focus on the most readily available solutions; he suggests that we learn to ask broader questions. According to the author, we're prone to "motivated blindness" we fail to notice the unethical behavior of others when such an oversight is in our own best interests. This kind of failure explains the "surprises" of the doomed Challenger shuttle; Jerry Sandusky's crimes at Penn State; child abuse in the Catholic Church; Bernie Madoff's fraud; and Hurricane Katrina, among other examples. Though the book promises to help leaders be more perceptive, it's minimally prescriptive, and will delight fans of behavioral psychology. This lively title isn't likely to make anyone change his or her behavior, but it sheds light on our troubling tendency to see only what's in front of our noses.