“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
Never Go With Your Gut:
How Pioneering Leaders Make the Best Decisions and Avoid Business Disasters
Do you want to avoid business and career disasters, whether minor mishaps or major calamities that threaten bankruptcy and bring down promising careers? Such disasters stem from poor decisions due to dangerous judgment errors that scholars call “cognitive biases.”
Never Go With Your Gut: How Pioneering Leaders Make the Best Decisions and Avoid Business Disasters is the first book to focus on cognitive biases in business leadership and career development and reveal how you can overcome these dangerous judgment errors effectively. By combining practical business case studies with cutting-edge research in cognitive neuroscience and behavioral economics, this book will help you make the wisest and most profitable decisions and protect yourself, your career, and your business from disasters.
Its author Dr. Gleb Tsipursky helps you achieve these goals by drawing on his two decades of experience consulting, coaching, and training leaders as CEO of Disaster Avoidance Experts. He also uses his background of over 15 years in academia as a behavioral economist and cognitive neuroscientist researching how to overcome cognitive biases in business decision making.
A free book sample including the introduction and first two chapters of Never Go With Your Gut: How Pioneering Leaders Make the Best Decisions and Avoid Business Disasters
A free copy of the author’s Assessment on Dangerous Judgment Errors in the Workplace. This strategic tool helps you and everyone on your team avoid the cognitive biases that lead to workplace disasters.
Free access to the author's “Wise Decision Maker Guide.” This resource provides you with vital ongoing tools on avoiding cognitive biases and making the best decisions to avoid professional and personal disasters in your email inbox every other Tuesday.
Decision aid business card of “5 Key Questions to Avoid Decisions Disasters” that you can get printed and keep in your wallet, on your desk, and give to members of your team. You’ll also get an article on using the “5 Key Questions” technique most effectively.
Decision aid poster for the Eight-Step Decision-Making Model on “Making the Best Decisions” for you to print out for your work and home office and for your team to print out. You’ll also get an article on using this technique most effectively.
Get Your Free Book Sample and Bonus Digital Materials!
Influential Media Featuring Dr. Gleb Tsipursky’s Cutting-Edge Expertise
Why Should You Get Never Go With Your Gut?
It will help you
Avoid Business Disasters
Protect Yourself From Cognitive Biases
Make the Best Decisions
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 Never Go With Your Gut 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.
Endorsements for Never Go With Your Gut
"The research literature is loaded with dozens of cognitive biases that convincingly demonstrate the folly of going with your gut. Yet generations of managers have consistently ignored this knowledge in favor of going with their 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 and Own Your Future
“My research on the common traits of millionaires parallels the kind of scholarship on the decision-making traits of effective business leaders described in Tsipursky’s Never Go With Your Gut. Many habits of successful business leaders and successful millionaires go against our intuition and instincts, which is why so few become millionaires and why relatively few business leaders make consistently good decisions. This book helps leaders notice when their emotions are driving them to make poor decisions, and provides clear and easy strategies to improve judgment calls, for individuals and teams alike. The book is thoroughly convincing. I recommend Tsipursky’s book to all business leaders who want to succeed!”
- William D. Danko, Ph.D., New York Times bestselling author of The Millionaire Next Door and Richer Than A Millionaire, Professor Emeritus at the School of Business of State University of New York at Albany
“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
“This is a compelling and much needed book. Its sage advice could not be offered (or heeded) soon enough. As Tsipursky argues convincingly, countless failed decisions and actions in companies around the world can be traced back to the glib, and ultimately foolish, idea that your gut knows more than your brain.”
- Amy C. Edmondson, PhD, Professor at Harvard Business School, bestselling author of The Fearless Organization and Teaming
“This groundbreaking book is badly needed! With cutting-edge research in behavioral economics and cognitive neuroscience, this book provides truly effective decision-making strategies that any business leader who hopes to succeed in the increasingly disrupted world of tomorrow needs to adopt.”
- Marshall Goldsmith, #1 New York Times bestselling author, Triggers, Mojo, and What Got You Here Won’t Get You There
“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, PhD, professor of leadership at Dartmouth College, bestselling author of Superbosses and Why Smart Executives Fail, and host of the podcast “The Sydcast”
“I was compelled to read Gleb Tsipursky's book yet found myself fighting with his premise. What do you mean don't go with my gut? Then I kept reading and applied his 8 step model to some major choices in front of me. Next, I reflected on a few disasters that perhaps could have been avoided if I had this book earlier. With practical tips and takeaways and research to support the methodology, this book will be on my recommendation list for the leaders whom I coach and train and added to my personal favorites.”
- Barb Girson, CEO and Founder of My Sales Tactics, LLC and Registered Corporate Coach
“Having worked in the technology field for almost 25 years, I have seen first-hand how many experienced top leaders have made bad decisions by “going with their gut.” Gleb Tsipursky’s book is an indispensable tool for any leader, especially in today’s world where new technologies are disrupting established business models, processes, and thinking. Tsipursky clearly shows in his book how cognitive biases, especially the blind belief of being immune to bias, cause experienced leaders to make bad decisions while ignoring time-tested and proven methods. He distills the decision-making process to an easy to follow eight-step model which can assist any leader in making first-rate decisions. This book is a must read not just for C-Level executives but for anyone involved in decision-making roles in the company.”
- Trideep Aggarwal, Co-Founder and CEO of TWAI – Modernizing Travel Distribution
“As an experienced healthcare CEO, I have seen too many leaders make poor decisions by following their gut reactions. Tsipursky’s book shows clearly the dangers of leaders trusting their intuitions, as all of us are susceptible to subtle decision-making errors called cognitive biases. More importantly, the book provides simple yet effective strategies that any leader can use to improve their decisions and those of their followers. If you want to protect yourself and others in your organization from dangerous judgment errors, make sure to get this groundbreaking book!”
- Randy Oostra, PhD, President and CEO at ProMedica Health System, listed as one of Modern Healthcare 100 Most Influential People in Healthcare and one of Becker’s Healthcare 100 Great Leaders in Healthcare
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, bestselling author of Marketing Rebellion and The Content Code, and Professor at Rutgers 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, Professor of Business, Economics and Law at Staffordshire University, bestselling author of Fast, Founder & CEO of Leadership Principles
“As a leader of a quickly growing national public charity dedicated to serving tens of thousands of North America’s most vulnerable children, it initially seemed counterintuitive to ‘never go with my gut' in making critical business decisions. Yet, Dr. Tsipursky’s research-based, step-by-step guidebook describing the 30 cognitive biases too often embedded in management presents a compelling alternative to instinctual or intuitive decision making. With chapter-relevant exercises, encouragement to keep a robust journal and detailed strategies for ‘debiasing’ business (and personal) decision making, Never Go With Your Gut will not only change the way you do business, but help drive toward greater success.”
- Rita L. Soronen, President & CEO, Dave Thomas Foundation for Adoption
Sample Techniques From the Book
Three Top Dangerous Judgment Errors (Cognitive Biases) to Avoid in Your Workplace
Overconfidence Effect
The overconfidence effect, our tendency to feel way too much confidence in our judgments. But wait, aren’t leaders supposed to be confident? Absolutely! An attitude of confidence is critical in order to inspire followers to implement a decision made by the leader. Such motivation is a fundamental activity of leaders. Yet, wise leaders who want to protect the bottom line of their company know they need to separate exhibiting confidence during the making of decisions from implementing decisions.
Planning Fallacy
The phrase “Failing to plan is planning to fail” is a myth, misleading at best and actively dangerous at worst. It is important to make plans, but our gut reaction is to plan for the best outcome and ignore the high likelihood that things will go wrong. Scholars call this cognitive bias the planning fallacy, where we have excessive confidence that our plans will go perfectly.
A more accurate phrase is, “Failing to plan for problems is planning to fail.” To address the high likelihood that problems will crop up, you need to plan for contingencies. To do so, you have to anticipate what problems might come up and address them in advance. You also have to recognize that you can’t anticipate every problem, and so you must build in a buffer of additional resources that can be deployed as unexpected problems come up.
Confirmation Bias
Why do so many business leaders who are generally perceived as highly competent and successful wear rose-colored glasses that prevent them from seeing obvious points of failure? They’re often brought down by the confirmation bias, a mental blindspot with two parts. First, we look only for information that confirms pre-existing beliefs. Second, we actively ignore any information that contradicts these beliefs.
Examples include leaders of large or midsize businesses who launch mergers and acquisitions, as well as entrepreneurs who start up small businesses, without first examining thoroughly the usual causes of failure for both types of endeavors.
It’s very typical for business leaders at all levels to look only for information that justifies their business case. It takes a lot of guts for someone from inside an organization to break the atmosphere of “make nice” if the organization doesn’t have a culture of healthy disagreement and searching for potential problems.
Selected Mental Habits to Defeat Dangerous Judgement Errors
Consider Alternative Explanations and Options
Say your boss is curt with you at work. You might take this behavior as a sign that the boss is angry with you. Perhaps your boss is in a bad mood because her lunch didn’t agree with her, or she’s very busy and didn’t have a chance to chat with you as she normally would. When you combine considering the alternative with probabilistic thinking, you can follow up with your boss later in the day when she has a quiet moment and observe how she interacts with you.
Consider Past Experiences
Are you always running late to work meetings? Are you the type of person who starts to get ready for a meeting that’s fifteen minutes away exactly fifteen minutes before the meeting? Chronic lateness harms your relationships and reputation as well as your mental and physical well-being through constant elevated levels of cortisol, the stress hormone. Self-reflecting on how long activities have taken in the past to inform your current activities will help your business relationships and your well-being.
Set a Policy That Guides Your Future Self or Your Organization
This is one of the easiest ways to address cognitive biases. In the heat of the moment it may be hard to delay decision-making, consider alternatives, or practice the Platinum Rule. Yet if you set a policy by which you abide, especially by using a decision aid, you can protect yourself from many dangerous biases. For example, you can commit to delay your responses to professional emails that make you upset for at least thirty minutes.
Evaluate the Long-Term Future and Repeating Scenarios
What happened the last time you asked your colleague to help you with a report? If he agreed, did he carry out his commitment, or not? If not, is this a pattern that repeats as you get increasingly aggravated about his failure? If so, why continue to ask him to help you in the first place? Maybe it’s better to have a serious conversation with him about keeping his commitments or just let it slide. This kind of evaluation of repeating scenarios can greatly improve your business relationships.
Selected Structured Decision-Making Strategies to Overcome Dangerous Judgement Errors
The “Five Questions to Avoid Decision Disasters” strategy empowers you to make the right calls quickly on everyday decisions. Taking less than 5 minutes in most cases, it can save you many days of grief and thousands of dollars.
The “Eight-Step Decision-Making Model” will be vital for you to make important decisions wisely. Using this technique will protect you from serious disasters that bring down successful companies and high-flying careers, instead maximizing your success and profitability.
More Endorsements for Never Go With Your Gut
“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, New York Times bestselling author of Eat that Frog! and Million Dollar Habits, along with over 70 other books
“Because life doesn’t come with an undo button, all leaders should read Never Go with Your Gut, by Disaster Avoidance Expert Dr. Gleb Tsipursky. This paradigm-shifter flies in the face of today’s technologically frenetic, fly by the seat of your pants management style. Beautifully researched and packed with case studies and cautionary tales, this book offers proven techniques that increase awareness of the many judgment errors we make each day. Dr. Tsipursky provides a clear path for leaders to shift from a pattern of destructive, impulsive decision making to one of intention and clarity.”
- Judy Robinett, Angel Investor and Startup Funding Expert, bestselling author of How to be a Power Connector and Crack the Funding Code
“Using compelling arguments, conclusive scientific data, and personal experience, Gleb Tsipursky has written a book that is unputdownable. He absolutely smashes the widely-used, but illogical ideal of 'following your gut', and offers in place of it an unfailing eight-step process that enables you to overcome cognitive biases and avoid hazardous errors of judgement, thus making you a far better leader than the one you were before you picked up this book.”
• Gopu Sundararajan, General Manager, Apollo Aerospace Components India
“Gleb Tsipursky has engineered simple-to-apply concepts for achieving your goals. Never Go With Your Gut is a brilliant template to support better decision making on your path to achieving personal and professional objectives.”
- Michael LaRosa, CEO, LaRosa’s Family Pizzerias
“Why do young entrepreneurs with almost no business experience outperform seasoned executives with decades of business experience? Gleb Tsipursky explains why in his provocative new book. Too much experience loads up a person’s gut and makes him or her impregnable to outside ideas and concepts.”
- Al Ries, Chairman of Ries and Ries, bestselling author of Positioning and The 22 Immutable Laws of Branding, as well as 7 other business books
“My career as a real estate CEO has shown me that the key to leading a business comes from getting the right information to make intelligent strategic decisions that are right, fair, just and consistent with your own principles and the culture of the company. I have experience making the right decisions for my company, but finally there’s a book that provides a clear structured approach that I can use both to improve my own decision-making – nobody’s perfect – and even more importantly use it to help others in my company make better decisions. Never Go With Your Gut excels at highlighting the dangers we all run into when trying to get the right information, due to the unconscious cognitive biases that cause us to see what we want to see, versus what’s really there. And the book shows its true strength in providing clear and pragmatic techniques to address these cognitive biases and make intelligent and moral business decisions. Tsipursky’s writing is clear and engaging, and the use of many case studies from his wide consulting and coaching experience is especially helpful for integrating the methods he describes into business reality. I also appreciate his reliance on recent research in behavioral economics and neuroscience, which makes his approach especially credible and convincing. I’ll be recommending this book to fellow business leaders, inside and outside my company, and will be using techniques from it to improve how my company runs.”
- Larry Korman, Co-CEO of Korman Communities, President of AKA Hotel Residences
“We live in an era where we hear a constant drumbeat of discussion around data, algorithms, and emerging digital technologies as the new tools and value-generators for business, including many leaders who proudly announce that they are data-driven or that they are a data company now. Yet, in this seemingly objective evidence-based business environment, with so much attention given to sounding the warning bells regarding bias in our algorithms or biased uses of data, it is quite surprising to find that much of that evidence-based data-driven objective approach has not permeated the mahogany doors of the corporate board room or executive suite. Many decisions made by individual leaders or leadership teams still fall back on less objective, often not evidence-based, historical modes of decision-making, which we call "gut instinct." Another variant of this is the quick repudiation of data-driven decisions made by naysayers whose actions prove the truth in Admiral Grace Hopper's famous remark that the most dangerous phrase in the language is, "We've always done it this way." Our gut, our historical baggage, and our very cognitive abilities are heavily biased in ways that are more harmful than beneficial. In this wonderful book by Gleb Tsipursky, we are treated with numerous lessons learned, best practices, guidelines, checklists, and early warning signs of cognitive biases that can lead to decisions that range from faulty, to bad, to outright disastrous. Gleb likens these faulty decision points to the same internal conversations that we have with ourselves when we choose the rich, delicious, sugary, chocolaty dessert instead of the healthier choice of a small fruit plate. Ouch! How often do we talk ourselves into a decision because it feels good or it feels right, only to have remorse soon (or at some point) thereafter? Gleb's book dives deep into the quagmire of cognitive biases that cloud our judgments and decisions, and then pulls us out and rescues us from those traps with pragmatic, success-proven advice and step-by-step processes. This book will not only be great for business leaders, but for anyone in any profession who is faced with decision-making, and even for our daily life decision points when the chocolate ice cream sundae or fourth slice of pizza seems to win the day over our best laid healthy plans and resolutions. I encourage you to resolve to get Gleb's book and to learn from it along all of your business and life decision journeys.”
- Kirk Borne, PhD, Principal Data Scientist and Executive Advisor at Booz Allen Hamilton
“Business leaders overwhelmingly trust their gut reactions to lead them to make good decisions. What they don’t realize is that their gut reactions come from their emotions, not their reason, so they treat their feelings as though they are as reliable as hard data. They are not. What happens? They make many mistakes that negatively impact their team, careers and bottom line. I’ve observed many such errors in my twenty-five years working with senior executives, and their teams. In fact, I this mistake myself, over and over again. It wasn’t until I read this book that I realized how often “going with my gut” didn’t turn out so well for me, my clients and my business. Tsipursky’s book provides efficient and effective solutions to this common problem. It helps leaders notice when their emotions are driving them to make poor decisions, and it provides clear and easy strategies to improve judgment calls, for individuals and teams alike. Particularly compelling and practical for business and life itself, is Tsipursky’s five question formula for making a decision based in science rather than folly. I wish I’d had this in my toolkit twenty years ago, and I’m sure to share it with all of our clients. If you want a powerful tool you’ll use every day, pick up a copy of this book.”
- Nancy D. Solomon, CEO & Founder of The Leadership Incubator, bestselling author of Impact!
Deep Dive: Never Go With Your Gut
You have three options to join Dr. Gleb Tsipursky for a deep dive into his new book, Never Go With Your Gut: How Pioneering Leaders Make the Best Decisions and Avoid Business Disasters. Choose wisely!
An online course of 10 live webinar modules presented by Dr. Gleb Tsipursky, one dealing with each book chapter.
You’ll get the benefit of an in-depth exploration of each strategy in the book.
Package cost: $295
Sold Out
An exclusive small-group executive mastermind of 10 sessions limited to 6 participants with executive backgrounds (C-suite, senior- and mid-level managers, small business owners) led by Dr. Gleb Tsipursky.
You’ll get the benefit of adapting the strategies in each book chapter to the specific career and business situations of each participant. You'll also get feedback and support from others with executive backgrounds.
Package cost: $995
Sold Out
A package of 10 one-on-one coaching sessions for those with executive backgrounds (C-suite, senior- and mid-level managers, small business owners) with Dr. Gleb Tsipursky.
You’ll get the benefit of a thoroughly customized experience of adapting the techniques in the book to your particular career and business needs.
Package cost: $3,995
Questions about any of these packages? Email Info@DisasterAvoidanceExperts.com or call 614-407-4016.
Even More Endorsements for Never Go With Your Gut
It doesn’t matter if you have been a business owner for decades or just recently becoming one this book is an absolute MUST purchase. Not only reading this book but applying the material will help manage the biases that are in your business that you may not even know are a problem. Over the last 12 years I felt in my gut I was always making the right decisions and although minor, I realize I have some work to do to make sure they do not become disasters in the future. Dr. Gleb’s book is very easy to follow and understand how to move along with the future of diversity in the workplace.
- Michelle Jeralds, Agency Owner of Brightway Insurance – The Michelle Jeralds Agency
In the present times, when adapting to constant change holds the key to leadership success, Gleb Tsipursky’s work is an informative and refreshing guide to business leaders who must make critical decisions with strategic foresight. Gleb’s cutting edge research and compelling case studies about organizations that went to ruin can be an excellent record of reference. The book serves as a useful guide for leaders to not repeat the mistakes that resulted in the downfall of powerful business empires.
Today, as technology disruptions and access to insightful analytics influence business decisions, Gleb’s book shows how our decision-making must evolve beyond gut feelings and cognitive biases. With “Eureka” moments stowed away in every chapter, Never Go With Your Gut can serve as a user manual to set the foundation for organizational success.
- Vivek Gupta, President and CEO, Mastech Digital
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, PhD, bestselling author of Unlocking Creativity and Know What You Don’t Know, and Trustee Professor of Management, Bryant University
Gleb Tsipursky’s book 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, bestselling author of StartupPro and Attracting an Angel, Founder & CEO of Startup Professionals, and Professor at Embry-Riddle University
In a world where human knowledge is doubling every 12 hours, the temptation for seasoned leaders to sacrifice research for expedience and “go with their gut” has never been greater and never been more at risk for failure. Fortunately, these business disasters can be avoided with a thoughtful appreciation of the cognitive biases that exist in our individual and collective psyches. In his book Never Go with Your Gut, Gleb Tsipursky provides insightful descriptions of the source of these biases and outlines proven strategies and tactics for applying data driven techniques to significantly improve the quality of our decisions. This is a practical must read for anyone at any age desiring to improve their decision making skills and make better choices.
- Steven Johnson, LLD, President and CEO of the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center Susquehanna, Fellow of the American College of Healthcare Executives
As an organizational designer, I have witnessed senior leaders mess things up by going with their gut – they were actually winging it, but came up with a fancier way to explain their stupidity! Gleb Tsipursky has taken his personal passion and translated it to an engaging book that will help you overcome your cognitive biases. If you are a leader keen to have a larger organizational impact you can’t make a better decision than to read this gem of a book that provides you with a practical framework for making the right and effective decisions.
- Bala V Sathyanarayanan, Senior Vice President and Chief Human Resources Officer at Greif, Inc.
“Decision making under conditions of limited information is a core aspect of all strategic roles. This book provides a very insightful set of lenses to understand the errors and biases that creep into our decision making in such situations. The ideas are based on scientific inquiry and evidence but are stated in a very accessible manner. I hope that this book will be widely read!”
- Jay Anand, PhD, William H. Davis Chair and Dean's Distinguished Professor of Strategy at The Ohio State University, Academic Director of the Ohio State Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship, Chair of the Academy of Management at IMD, and Associate Editor of the Global Strategy Journal
Never Go With Your Gut combines the author's extensive consulting and coaching experience with cutting-edge research in behavioral economics and neuroscience. It's a deep dive into our cognitive biases and describes the many ways our decision making is flawed. It provides a plan for individuals as well as organizations of all sizes, to identify and overcome the ways our brains so often lead us astray.
- Nir Eyal, bestselling author of Hooked and Indistractable
This book is fascinating to read. My new understanding of these decision-making biases will certainly improve our business as we adopt the strategies learned. Gleb’s examples and cautionary tales helped me see where we were doing some things right by using group decision-making to avoid optimism bias, and where we need to improve decision-making by journaling our thoughts after each chapter. I now understand that my 34 years in a non-profit have helped me gain experience to make good decisions, not my gut. So sad, I was proud of my gut decisions! I recommend all leaders read the book, and it will be a Must Read for the leadership team in my organization.
- Jacqueline Fox, CEO of West Ohio Community Action Partnership
In Never Go With Your Gut, the author shares a great model of decision making that we can practice in our everyday life – business , leadership, friendship and family. Gleb gives you this great model that is built on real science, statistics, emotional intelligence, and psychology of human behavior. But what is really unique about his work is that he allows us – readers – to decide how we want to utilize this universal tool. Each line of the NGWYG is pretty powerful and consistent. It is one of those smart reads that you want to get back and re-read it again after facing a complex issue or uncertainty.
- Steve Dubrasky, Senior Human Resources Business Leader at Progressive Insurance
A compelling study of cognitive biases and their contribution to dangerous “from the gut” judgement errors. A must-read guide for business leaders looking to maximize the potential for positive outcomes through improved personal (and team) awareness.
- Glenn Richardson, Managing Director for JobsOhio, with previous senior leadership roles with Dana Corporation and Rolls-Royce.
We are living in a world of rapid change, yet still using instinctive mental models learned during humanity's days on the savanna. Gleb's book explains in great detail, yet simple to understand, why it's no wonder there are so many mistakes made by "going with our gut!" Mixing behavioral science with design thinking frameworks, he provides useful examples from a range of circumstances. Following this book's teachings will give you insights and actionable strategies for living a more productive and rewarding life. Don't make the mistake of only reading it, but work through the exercises...you can't learn to dance by only watching others dance!"
- Nik Rokop, PhD, Coleman Foundation Clinical Associate Professor of Entrepreneurship, Stuart School of Business, Illinois Institute of Technology, and CEO Emeritus of nLake Technology Partners
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
Gleb Tsipursky has an important message that many people won’t want to hear, but the ones who most strongly resist his wise advice are the ones who could benefit the most from it. Never Go With Your Gut uses evidence and research to help you make better intentional decisions that can head off preventable surprises in business and life instead of letting gut reactions lead you astray.
- Michele Wucker, bestselling author of The Gray Rhino
In my business, it was always about the gut (or “the creative”). That changed when data became a much bigger part of the marketing mix. Now, we have a book like Never Go With Your Gut to help us all better understand where data and instinct should best meet. Gleb has written a thoroughly enjoyable (and thought-provoking) book that probably runs counter to what some of the biggest leaders have told us. Your gut may not be able to recognize unexpected opportunities or why your team behaves the way that it does. If you strive for success, Never Trust Your Gut is way better than just your gut. Trust me.
- Mitch Joel, Founder of Six Pixels Group, and author of Six Pixels of Separation and CTRL ALT Delete
The traditional risk-return tradeoff implies that that higher risk is associated with a greater probability of return. Author Gleb Tsipursky successfully challenges this paradigm, where a greater probability of return actually comes from lowering the inherent risks of making poor business decisions from the gut.
- Carey Chen, Executive Chairman and President of Cincinnati Incorporated
Dr. Gleb Tsipursky
Dr. Gleb Tsipursky empowers you to avoid business disasters as a consultant, coach, speaker, trainer, and CEO of Disaster Avoidance Experts. A best-selling author, he wrote Never Go With Your Gut, The Blindspots Between Us, and The Truth Seeker’s Handbook.
His cutting-edge thought leadership was featured in over 400 articles and 350 interviews in Fast Company, CBS News, Time, Scientific American, The Conversation, Business Insider, Government Executive, The Chronicle of Philanthropy, Psychology Today, Inc. Magazine, and elsewhere. He has a strong research background in behavioral economics and cognitive neuroscience with over 15 years in academia, including 7 as a professor at the Ohio State University, with dozens of peer-reviewed academic publications.
In his free time, he enjoys tennis, gardening, and most importantly, spending abundant quality time with his wife to avoid disasters in his personal life.
Still More Endorsements for Never Go With Your Gut
Evidence-based business is the antidote to uncertainty, and this book is here to define this concept. As someone who runs a healthcare company that focuses on evidence-based medicine, it’s only logical to adapt evidence-based business practices too: a concept that is more an expectation for us rather than a style or trend. This book will help you adopt evidence-based business practices, and I highly recommend it!
- Elena A. Christofides, MD, CEO of Endocrinology Associates, and Clinical Associate Professor at Ohio University
As medical science increasingly ties the gut microbiome to cognition and healthy neurological function, Never Trust Your Gut describes your plan to overcome unhealthy gut instinct. Gleb Tsipursky has brought to the forefront the ingrained decision-making that leads to poor life decisions, with deep personal insights, real-world examples and a regular dose of welcomed humor. Exercises guide the reader to reflect on uncomfortable realities while uncovering latent behaviors and cognitive biases that lead to a deeper self-awareness of misplaced trust. Trust is your most valuable asset – why leave it to the insatiability and impulsivity of your gut?
- Kurt Roemer, Chief Security Strategist, Citrix Systems
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 of High Growth Levers and Growth or Bust!
Most decision-makers believe they get paid to use their gut instincts and that's the value they add. But the world we are now entering is one of volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity. Those who don't have data science and a strong rational toolkit will fare worse than those who take this seriously. You can't get everything right, but you can put the odds in your favor. If you're willing to give up your ego and go after business results, this is your operating manual.
- David Siegel, Founder at Digital Asset Standards Association, former Candidate Dean of Stanford Business School, and bestselling author of Pull and Futurize Your Enterprise
Reading this value-packed book will greatly improve my work as a top labor and employment lawyer and mediator, and will have the same benefit for any other professionals who do so. I’ve seen many professionals make good decisions and bad decisions, but this is the first book that shows exactly why and how we make either bad decisions or good ones. Our evolutionary backgrounds motivates much of our bad decision-making, and we need to guard ourselves against these intuitive impulses. Never Go With Your Gut provides clear case studies of where we tend to fall into such decision-making biases in the workplace, and offers clear and pragmatic strategies that anyone can use to avoid these problems. The book is an easy read that can be consumed on an airplane ride, but I strongly recommend that you do the exercises to develop a plan of addressing any decision-making biases within your own organization or personal practice. Indeed, as a lawyer we are often asked by clients to provide advice on business strategies and encouraging the importance of developing and following a business plan. Any professional who wants to avoid bad decisions and ensure they make the best decisions should read this book, and I will encourage those in my own firm to read the book and use the techniques from it.
- Michael Hawkins, Partner, Dinsmore & Shohl LLP
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, CEO Emeritus of Young Isaac
Never Go With Your Gut is a five-fingered death punch to the long accepted belief that gut decisions are the most reliable. Gleb Tsipursky gives us numerous, recent examples from well-known leaders and their organizations that demonstrate how many critical decisions made with the gut have caused literal business disasters. This book should send shock waves through the leadership development industry. If you’re in business, you better read it!
- Bill Schabel, Principal Consultant, Hyperformance Learning, Inc.
In reading Never Go With Your Gut: How Pioneering Leaders Avoid Business Disasters and Make the Best Decisions, I am encouraged to hear from an authority like Gleb that people who really want to contribute and serve are themselves better served by consistently and persistently applying the idea of “truth-telling” to all aspects of their lives, especially in their service through their work. Just as important as “telling the truth,” is learning what the truth is – the “truth gathering” process, which Gleb outlines so succinctly. For anyone who values themselves, their time, the work they offer to the world, and all the people whose lives they touch, I highly recommend reading, absorbing and applying the truth in this book in all areas their life -- most especially, their work!
- Pat Lynch, CEO of Women’s Radio
The healthcare industry is one characterized by ambiguity and rapid change. All too often, decisions are made based on prior experience and informed by subconscious biases that may lead to unfortunate errors in judgment. In clinical practice, efforts to improve quality and safety are increasingly refined and data-informed, and sophisticated tools are used routinely to distribute information to front-line providers and staff committed to delivering high-quality and evidence-based care. In spite of this, errors in diagnostic reasoning and medical decision-making have been difficult to impact in a systematic way. Cognitive strategies adopted by physicians – the “art” of medicine – are susceptible to biased and heuristic-based thinking and may contribute to errors that prove resistant to data-driven mitigation strategies. Never Go With Your Gut describes a practical, simple and evidence-based method to improve decision-making, and provides ample opportunity for the committed student to adopt and to practice recommended techniques. Increased awareness of “how we think,” and application of intentional strategies to refine and enhance decision-making, are skills that every leader should commit to in their daily work, whether in a business environment or when providing clinical care at the bedside.
- Norman C. Christopher, MD, Chairman of the Department of Pediatrics at Akron Children’s Hospital, Professor and Noah Miller Chair at Northeast Ohio Medical University
It’s the oldest problem in the world- it’s even mentioned in the Book Of Genesis. How do you keep the tools the Good Lord gave us from getting in our own way? Gleb has written a really interesting book here about how we might go about solving that.
- Hugh MacLeod, Lead Artist and Co-Founder of Gapingvoid LLC, and bestselling author of Ignore Everybody.
While exposing the ubiquitous and oftentimes devasting tendency to rely on gut instinct rather than thoughtful objectivity, Gleb Tsipursky offers a pragmatic and compelling decision-making process that will most assuredly lead to better outcomes – both in business and in life!
- Matt Durfee, President of Navigator Executive Advisors, and bestselling author of The Job Search Navigator
For those who think guts are brains, skip this book and best wishes for avoiding disaster. For those who want to make better decisions – as removed as can be from implicit bias we all carry – read this book! Important matters deserve clear thought. Gleb’s advice is succinct, thoughtful, compelling, offering solid tips on how to minimize risk and maximize odds for success in business and beyond.
- Joseph J. Dehner, Esq., International Services Group Chair at Frost Brown Todd, podcast host of “Data Privacy Detective”
As an expert in how to truly build wealth and escape mainstream myths through the power of entrepreneurship, I can attest that this groundbreaking book is badly needed! Leaders typically perceive their decision-making process as both rational and correct. They tend to forget that people – including themselves – are first emotional and then rational. Our emotional intuitions will often lead us to make poor decisions, usually because we follow mainstream norms, which undermine both company success and the careers of individual leaders. Fortunately, Never Go With Your Gut helps leaders notice when their emotions are driving them to make poor decisions, and provides clear and easy strategies to address these problems. Combining the author’s extensive practical business experience as a management consultant and executive coach with cutting-edge research in behavioral economics and cognitive neuroscience, this book provides the kind of techniques that any business leader who hopes to succeed in the increasingly disrupted world of tomorrow needs to adopt. I also love the book’s flowing and straightforward writing style, which uses pragmatic business case studies to illustrate the problems and solutions engagingly and effectively. If you want to succeed in the world of tomorrow, pick up a copy of this book today: I’ll be recommending it to all the business leaders who I want to succeed!
- MJ Demarco, CEO of Viperion Publishing Corp, and bestselling author of The Millionaire Fastlane and Unsrcipted
The success of your business often comes down to the quality of your decisions in the face of uncertainty. More information isn’t necessarily the answer if you don’t have the tools to process that information correctly and without bias. Never Go With Your Gut is an entertaining and highly practical guide to avoiding the pitfalls and biases that trip up even the most experienced leaders.
- Todd Henry, bestselling author of Die Empty and The Accidental Creative
There are no shortage of books and experts that implore us to make decisions based on our hearts or our guts. Although this approach has its place, it can be devoid of confirmation through data analysis and solid research methods. Gleb’s brilliant Never Go With Your Gut thoughtfully explores how enormous mistakes can be made by not learning from mistakes and by not using data-based, analytical, research-based methods that allow for the systematic leveraging of knowledge to manage risks. The exercises are helpful to take the concepts in the book and help turn them into actionable results. Anyone wishing to avoid disasters in the future would be well served by incorporating the knowledge and wisdom contained in this boo
- Brent Hunter, CEO of Spirit Rising Productions, Knowledge Management expert, and author of The Power of KM
In his book, Never Go with Your Gut, Dr. Gleb Tsipursky offers a clear and compelling description of how and why following our intuition can lead us to disaster in business and life. Informed by years of sound research and consulting experience, he offers a series of techniques and practical ideas to hack our brains and be more effective. This book is full of examples, stories and exercises that can be put into practice in business and daily life. I highly recommended it for all decision makers, leaders, and those looking to become leaders.
- Carolina Thatcher, MPA, Diversity and Inclusion Expert
Tsipursky’s insightful book reveals, explains, and offers solutions to the dangers of leaders trusting their gut reactions. All of us are susceptible to perilous, decision-making errors caused by cognitive bias. Such errors have ruined many great companies and have crashed the high-flying careers of top executives, yet so many leaders fail to improve their arguably most important skill: decision-making. Using a combination of pragmatic business case studies drawn from his experience as a management consultant along with cutting-edge research in behavioral economics and cognitive neuroscience, Tsipursky presents a powerfully convincing body of work. If you wish to succeed in the future, purchase a copy of this book today. It will be one of the best decisions you’ve ever made.
- Kevin D. Johnson, President and CEO of Johnson Media, bestselling author of The Entrepreneur Mind
As a bestselling author and keynote speaker in how leaders can best improve their performance and results, I can honestly say that Never Go With Your Gut is a must read. Combining the author’s practical business experience as a management consultant with cutting-edge research in behavioral economics and cognitive neuroscience, this book provides strategies and techniques that any business leader will find helpful.
- Brian P. Moran, bestselling author of The 12 Week Year
Reading this value-packed book will greatly improve my work as an executive in senior living real estate management. I’ve seen business leaders make good decisions and bad decisions, but this is the first book that shows exactly why and how we make either bad decisions or good ones. Our evolutionary backgrounds motivates much of our bad decision-making, and we need to guard ourselves against these intuitive impulses. Never Go With Your Gut provides business case studies of where we tend to fall into such decision-making biases, and offers clear and pragmatic strategies that anyone can use to avoid these problems. The book is an easy read that can be consumed on an airplane ride, but I strongly recommend that you do the exercises to develop a plan of addressing any decision-making biases within your own organization. Any business leader who wants to avoid bad decisions and ensure they make the best decisions should read this book, and I will make sure that everyone in my own company will read and use the techniques from this book.
- Anthony Fucaloro, Regional Vice President, Atria Senior Living
In a world overwrought with fictitious literature, as well as novels of fiction, it's both refreshing and reassuring to have Gleb Tsipursky's book: Never Go With Your Gut. I had a mentor who worked with many boards of directors and he had a saying on those few directors who refused to acknowledge the truth: "Don't overwhelm me with informed facts to complicate the decision I already made." It's sad that we live in the present society where science and verified factual data are refuted and substituted by "alternative facts." Gleb's book is like a breath of cool fresh air.
- Mike Nizankiewicz, Vice President, Association Management Group
"Timing is everything! I have two grandsons who are budding entrepreneurs (32 and 29). Thank you Gleb Tsipursky, for writing this instructional and wise book. It will be a helpful guide as they are launching their start ups”.
- Elaine Adler, Founder of Myron Manufacturing Corporation & The Adler Aphasia Center
Best Seller Status
Never Go With Your Gut reached #46 in Amazon Best Sellers and #8 in Amazon Hot New Releases, both in the Decision-Making & Problem Solving category.
For the Media
Sample Media Interviews on "Never Go With Your Gut"
Recent Blogs by Dr. Gleb Tsipursky
Managers Want You Back in the Office—Because They’re Not Ready for Hybrid
A lack of training for hybrid work, with only 10% of managers receiving mandatory instruction, hampers productivity and engagement, leading to a push for back in the office.
Will Remote Work Determine the Election?
The surge in remote work has fueled migration from Democratic urban centers to more affordable suburban and rural areas, often in Republican or swing states, potentially shifting voter demographics and influencing close races in battleground states for the 2024 election.
Cognitive Biases in Gen AI Adoption for Association Meeting Planners
To navigate Gen AI adoption for association meeting planners, it’s essential to address cognitive biases like status quo bias and loss aversion. Clear communication, training, and empathy are essential to overcome resistance and enhance member engagement.