Review and personal recommendation by
Sandy Vaci (SEED Faculty and Editorial Reviewer of the book)

The article originally appeared at HVG online portal (in Hungarian).

Original edition: Little, Brown and Company, July 2020  •  Olivier Sibony
Hungarian edition: HVG Könyvek, June 2021  •  Olivier Sibony, Editorial Reviewer: Sandy Vaci

Our brains are programmed to make the more than 30,000 decisions we face every day as quickly and easily as possible. The problem arises when we need to make well-thought out, conscious decisions – and we continue to think in “automatic mode” in the same way. This is why our decisions often seem unpredictable.

Unfortunately, the plenty of “Get to Know Yourself and Overcome Your Weaknesses!” self-help books do not help with this. Most of us heard about the research showing that 80 to 90 percent of people think of themselves as “above-average drivers”. Which, of course is technically impossible. What’s even more problematic, when we confront them, they don’t change their minds either.

According to a research, more than 70 percent of people who caused an accident and were hospitalized for it still think they are “above-average drivers”. We not only do not see our own weaknesses, but when we are confronted with them, we are also unwilling to admit or change them. Olivier Sibony’s new book – ‘You’re About to Make a Terrible Mistake! (also available in Hungarian: Döntéshozatali csapdák) – shows a way out of this trap.

In his book, Sibony reduced the effects that trick decision traps to 25 cognitive biases. And most importantly, it shows that these do not need to be defended separately. A decision-making framework (called “architecture” by Sibony) can be set up, which automatically neutralizes traps. With this, we make our decision-making unpredictability to “predictable”.

Now we just need to translate the research results into everyday applications and we have the solution in our hands. Fortunately, it’s already happened. The CodeBreakers company, which Sibony helped to create, summarized how to do this in a 40-point, 4-block template. Their website illustrates what we need to do with many examples, interactive games and presentation material.

Here you can order Olivier Sibony’s book in Hungarian from HVG Könyvek with discount.

Click here to read the foreword by Sandy Vaci and the introduction from the Hungarian edition.

About the author

Olivier Sibony is a professor, author and advisor specializing in the quality of strategic thinking and the design of decision processes. From 1991 to 2015, Olivier was a consultant, Partner and Director in the Paris, New York and Brussels offices of McKinsey & Company. He is Professor of Strategy at HEC Paris and teaches in a number of other European institutions and advises business leaders as consultant or as Board member. Olivier holds a Ph. D. from Université Paris-Dauphine. He is a knight in the French Order of the Légion d’Honneur. He is married and the father of two children. He lives in Paris.