Tag: Halo effect

Halo effect: difference between reports and stories

This is a part of quotes and thoughts that attracted my attention, while reading the “The Halo Effect …and the Eight Other Business Delusions that Deceive Managers” by Phil Rosenzweig (Free Press, 2014).

pages 15-16:

It’s useful to make the distinction between reports and stories. A report is above all responsible for providing the facts, without manipulation or interpretation. If the accounts about Lego and WH Smith are meant to be reports – which presumably they are, since they’re written by reporters – then words like  stray or  drift are problematic. Stories, on the other hand, are a way that people try to make sense of their lives and their experiences in the world. The test of a good story isn’t its responsibility to the facts as much as its ability to provide a satisfying explanation of events. As stories, the news accounts about Lego and WH Smith work just fine. In a few paragraphs, the reader learns of the problem (sales and profits are down), gets a plausible explanation (the company lost its direction), and learns a lesson (don’t stray, focus on the core). There’s a neat end with a clean resolution. No threads are left hanging. Readers go away satisfied.

Now, there’s nothing wrong with stories, provided we understand that’s what we have before us. More insidious, however, are stories that are dressed up to look like science. They take the form of science and claim to have the authority of science, but they miss the real rigor and logic of science. They’re better described as pseudo-science.

Halo Effect: difference between illusion and delusion

This is a part of quotes and thoughts that attracted my attention, while reading the “The Halo Effect …and the Eight Other Business Delusions that Deceive Managers” by Phil Rosenzweig.

Preface, p. xxi:

A longtime friend of mine, Dick Stull, explains the difference between illusion and delusion this way. When Michael Jordan appears to hang motionless in midair for a split second while on his way to a slam-dunk, that’s an illusion. Your eyes are playing tricks on you. But if you think you can lace up a pair of Nikes, grab a basketball, and be like Mike, well, that’s a delusion. You are kidding yourself. It ain’t gonna happen. The delusions I describe in this book are a bit like that – they’re promises that you can achieve great success if you just do one thing or another, but they’re fundamentally flawed. In fact, some of the biggest business blockbusters of recent years contain not one or two, but several delusions. For all their claims of scientific rigor, for all their lengthy descriptions of apparently solid and careful research, they operate mainly at the level of storytelling. They offer tales of inspiration that we find comforting and satisfying, but they’re based on shaky thinking. They’re deluded.

Halo Effect: Travel Theorem – enjoyment or learning

This is a part of quotes and thoughts that attracted my attention, while reading the “The Halo Effect …and the Eight Other Business Delusions that Deceive Managers” by Phil Rosenzweig.

pages xxii-xxiii:

…I want you to challenge what I write rather than accept it. One of my role models here is the late Herbert Simon, father of artificial intelligence, Nobel Prize winner in economics for his work on decision making, and professor at Carnegie Mellon University from the late 1940s until his death in 2001. In his memoirs, Models of My Life, Simon described how his service on several foreign fact-finding missions in the 1960s, often time-consuming and very costly, led him to formulate his Travel Theorem, which goes like this:

Anything that can be learned by a normal American adult on a trip to a foreign country (of less than one year’s duration) can be learned more quickly, cheaply, and easily by visiting the San Diego Public Library.

The response? Simon wrote: “People react almost violently to my Travel Theorem. I try to explain that it has nothing to do with the pleasures of travel, but only with the efficiency of travel for learning. They don’t seem to hear my explanation; they remain outraged. They point out that I seem to be traveling all the time. Why shouldn’t other people travel too? After they simmer down enough to understand the theorem, they still attack шею It takes a long time to calm their passion with reason – and usually it isn’t extinguished, but temporarily subdued. Why, they think, argue with a madman?”

Well, I think Travel Theorem is wonderful – not because I agree with it, but because it makes me think. It forces me to ask: What is the real purpose of this trip? Is it for enjoyment or for learning? If the latter, exactly what am I trying to learn, and what’s the best way to learn it? Could my time and money be better spent searching available sources rather than running off to the ends of the earth? Disagree with Simon’s Travel Theorem if you wish, but that’s not the point. The point is to force us to ask under what circumstances it’s correct and when it’s false – and that sort of critical thinking is always useful.