Episode 77

Alex Edmans: Dealing with lies

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Living and working in a more critical manner allows you to be more informed and less impacted by bias. This can have positive impacts on your work and those around you, just by challenging yourself to think differently.

In this episode I am joined by Alex Edmans, author of May Contain Lies. He shares his deep knowledge of bias and how to think smarter and more critically. He discusses how he uses this within personal aspects of his life too.

Are you confusing correlation with causation? A statement with a fact? Evidence with proof?

This episode is full of practical advice you can use in your projects or meetings. Or even when listening to the news, to become more aware of what could be misinformation.

You’ll hear about:

Which are the most harmful biases?
How pervasive are biases?
Does Alex make gut decisions still?
Business and the ladder of inference
Using these ideas in practice
Is doing less better?
Looking at specifics vs broad data
How to challenge people with ill-informed views
How to inspire more debate and dissent
Managing himself with other’s critical thinking
What Alex’s best days look like

The best bits of these conversations are captured in my newsletter Strategic Leader.

More about Alex

Alex Edmans is Professor of Finance at London Business School. He has a PhD from MIT as a Fulbright Scholar, and was previously a tenured professor at Wharton and an investment banker at Morgan Stanley. He has spoken at the World Economic Forum in Davos, testified in the UK parliament, and given the TED talk ‘What to Trust in a Post-Truth World’ and the TEDx talks ‘The Pie-Growing Mindset’ and ‘The Social Responsibility of Business’ with a combined 2.8 million views. He is a non-executive director of the Investor Forum, on the World Economic Forum’s Global Future Council on Responsible Investing, and on Royal London Asset Management’s Responsible Investment Advisory Committee.

He has won 25 teaching awards at Wharton and LBS and was named Professor of the Year by Poets & Quants in 2021.

His resources:

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“Misinformation affects our professional and personal lives.”

Alex Edmans, Professor of Finance, LBS

VIEW RUNNING ORDER

02.45	Which are the most harmful biases?
05.38	How pervasive are biases?
07.49	Does Alex make gut decisions still?
10.10	Business and the ladder of inference.
13.29	Using these ideas in practice.
18.56	Is doing less better?
23.23	Looking at specifics vs broad data.
27.24	How to challenge people with ill-informed views.
31.23	How to inspire more debate and dissent.
35.16	How Alex manages himself with other’s critical thinking.
37.44	What do Alex’s best days look like?