• Skip to main content
  • Skip to header right navigation
  • Skip to site footer
Farnam Street Logo

Farnam Street

Mastering the best of what other people have already figured out

  • Articles
  • Newsletter
  • Podcast
  • Books
  • Courses
  • Log In
  • Become a Member

Max Bazerman

The Power of Noticing: What the Best Leaders See

In The Power of Noticing: What the Best Leaders See, Harvard Professor Max Bazerman, opines about how the failure to notice things leads to “poor personal decisions, organizational crises, and …

Continue readingThe Power of Noticing: What the Best Leaders See

Max Bazerman Offers Books for Leaders

Max Bazerman, the author of the best book on general decision making that I’ve ever read, Judgment in Managerial Decision Making, came out with 7 book recommendations1. I hadn’t heard of …

Continue readingMax Bazerman Offers Books for Leaders

Daniel Kahneman’s Favorite Approach For Making Better Decisions

Bob Sutton’s book, Scaling Up Excellence: Getting to More Without Settling for Less, contains an interesting section towards the end on looking back from the future, which talks about “a …

Continue readingDaniel Kahneman’s Favorite Approach For Making Better Decisions

Mental Model: Bias from Insensitivity to Sample Size

The widespread misunderstanding of randomness causes a lot of problems. Today we’re going to explore a concept that causes a lot of human misjudgment. It’s called the bias from insensitivity to …

Continue readingMental Model: Bias from Insensitivity to Sample Size

Making Smart Choices: 8 Keys to Making Effective Decisions

Making decisions is a fundamental life skill. Expecting to make perfect decisions all of the time is unreasonable. When even an ounce of luck is involved, good decisions can have bad outcomes. So our …

Continue readingMaking Smart Choices: 8 Keys to Making Effective Decisions

Insensitivity To Base Rates: An Introduction

In statistics, a base rate refers to the percentage of a population (e.g. grasshoppers, people who live in New York, newborn babies) which have a characteristic. Given a random individual and no …

Continue readingInsensitivity To Base Rates: An Introduction

3 Things Everyone Should Know About the Availability Heuristic

There are 3 things you should know about the availability heuristic: We often misjudge the frequency and magnitude of events that have happened recently. This happens, in part, because of the …

Continue reading3 Things Everyone Should Know About the Availability Heuristic

Ethical Breakdowns: Why Good People often Let Bad Things Happen

When Charlie Munger recommended reading Max Bazerman’s Judgment in Managerial Decision Making I had never hear of the HBS professor. A lot of reading later and I’m a huge fan. In the HBR …

Continue readingEthical Breakdowns: Why Good People often Let Bad Things Happen

Can one person successfully play different roles that require different, and often competing, perspectives?

No, according to research by Max Bazerman, author of the best book on decision making I’ve ever read: Judgment in Managerial Decision Making. Contrary to F. Scott Fitzgerald’s famous …

Continue readingCan one person successfully play different roles that require different, and often competing, perspectives?

The Anatomy of a Decision: An Introduction to Decision Making

“The only proven way to raise your odds of making a good decision is to learn to use a good decision-making process—one that can get you the best solution with a minimal loss of time, energy, …

Continue readingThe Anatomy of a Decision: An Introduction to Decision Making

Discover What You’re Missing

Get the weekly email full of actionable ideas and insights you can use at work and home.


As seen on:

Forbes logo
New York Times logo
Wall Street Journal logo
The Economist logo
Financial Times logo
Farnam Street Logo

© 2023 Farnam Street Media Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Proudly powered by WordPress. Hosted by Pressable. See our Privacy Policy.

  • Speaking
  • Sponsorship
  • About
  • Support
  • Education

We’re Syrus Partners.
We buy amazing businesses.


Farnam Street participates in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising commissions by linking to Amazon.