In poker and throughout our lives, we should try to maximize the time we spend in favorable situations and minimize our time in unfavorable ones. Poker players are too quick to quit when they are winning. They look for any excuse to put the session in the (nonexistent) win column. The same players will refuse to quit a losing game. The same thing happens outside poker: Sales professionals not giving up on a dead lead and investors unwilling to sell their losing investments. Even something as pedestrian as picking the slowest line at a grocery store and being unwilling to change lines stems from the same bias. Annie Duke examines how the interaction of many cognitive biases (including loss aversion and sunk-cost bias) drives this behavior. These tendencies cause us to miss good opportunities and continue playing when the odds are against us. Annie provides insight into avoiding this costly decision-making error with strategies that prevent us initially making these poor decisions and how to take a longer-term view so we are not as caught up in the emotion of the moment. These strategies apply in the workplace, to parenting and to other personal decisions.
Can dignity open the door to a revolution in the twenty-first century workplace?
Ari Weinzweig says, “Yes!” This keynote details Ari’s path from feeling deep despair in late February of 2022 in the weeks following the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Unsure of how to help, Ari—a Russian history major at University of Michigan many years earlier—began to study the history of Ukraine. Ari shares,
"What might feel overwhelming when we’re going through it can be inverted to help open windows of hope, awe, and wonder. Robert F. Kennedy once said, “Tragedy is a tool for the living to gain wisdom,” and that is what I try to do when things like this happen. When I feel down, I do what any geeky, introverted history major might also consider—I hit the books. For me, one of the best ways through suffering and uncertainty is to start studying."
