Stefan Swanepoel: Surviving Your Serengeti - Blog Business Success Radio

Listen to Wayne Hurlbert on Blog Talk Radio



Successful business person, widely traveled public speaker, visionary real estate trend watcher, and author of the fascinating and perceptive business parable Surviving Your Serengeti: 7 Skills to Master Business and Life, Stefan Swanepoel, describes the unique and effective survival strategies used by the animals on Africa's harsh Serengeti. The one thousand mile wildebeest migration provides a powerful metaphor for survival in the corporate world. Each of the species utilizes a highly specialized, and very effective survival strategy. Stefan identifies seven unique techniques, and the wildlife species that use them well, Failure on the Serengeti means starvation or death. The skills learned from the animals can be transferred directly, based on human business personalities, into the twenty-first century business environment. Learn how to master these widely diverse strategies in your own life.

Stefan Swanepoel is my internet radio show guest on Blog Business Success; hosted live on BlogTalkRadio.

The show airs live on Thursday, January 27, at 8:00 pm Eastern Time; 5:00 pm Pacific Time.

Successful business person, widely traveled public speaker, visionary real estate trend watcher, and author of the fascinating and perceptive business parable Surviving Your Serengeti: 7 Skills to Master Business and Life, Stefan Swanepoel, describes the unique and effective survival strategies used by the animals on Africa's harsh Serengeti. You will learn:

* The seven survival strategies used by animals on the Serengeti

* Why these survival skills are important for business people to understand

* How to discover your own parallel skill to a Serengeti animal

* How to overcome obstacles in business and your personal life



Stefan Swanepoel's (photo left) life has been a “Serengeti journey”—from his birth in Kenya to schooling in Hong Kong and South Africa eventually, running a New York-based global franchise network with 25,000 sales associates in 30 countries. In all he has served as president of seven companies and two non-profit organizations.

Now for the first time he has combined his love of wildlife and nature, his ability to captivate audiences, and his comprehensive life experience into a captivating message in a major trade book. In Surviving Your Serengeti: 7 Skills to Master Business and Life, he vividly portrays how this larger-than-life metaphor can provide guidance and inspiration for individuals and companies in today’s fast, busy and complex world.

Stefan has authored 19 books and reports on business trends, real estate and social media. He lives with his wife and two sons in California.

My book review of Surviving Your Serengeti: 7 Skills to Master Business and Life by Stefan Swanepoel.

Listen live on Thursday at 8:00 pm Eastern, 5:00 pm Pacific time.



If you miss this very informative show, it will be available for free download as a podcast for iPod, iTunes, and MP3 players; or play it right on your computer. To download this, or any other of my guest interviews, go to the Blog Business Success host page and click on Archived Segments. Once there, click on the podcast icon at the end of the episode description, to download the show free of charge for your listening enjoyment. You can also subscribe to the show feed.



To call in questions for my guest, the number is: (347) 996-5832

Let's talk with successful business person, widely traveled public speaker, visionary real estate trend watcher, and author of the fascinating and perceptive business parable Surviving Your Serengeti: 7 Skills to Master Business and Life, Stefan Swanepoel, as he describes the unique and effective survival strategies used by the animals on Africa's harsh Serengeti. The one thousand mile wildebeest migration provides a powerful metaphor for survival in the corporate world. Each of the species utilizes a highly specialized, and very effective survival strategy. Stefan identifies seven unique techniques, and the wildlife species that use them well, Failure on the Serengeti means starvation or death. The skills learned from the animals can be transferred directly, based on human business personalities, into the twenty-first century business environment. Learn how to master these widely diverse strategies in your own life on Blog Business Success Radio.

Tags: Surviving Your Serengeti: 7 Skills to Master Business and Life, Stefan Swanepoel, enhanced management strategies, Blog Business Success, Blog Talk Radio.

Surviving Your Serengeti by Stefan Swanepoel - Book review

Surviving Your Serengeti

7 Skills to Master Business and Life

By: Stefan Swanepoel

Published: March 1, 2011
Format: Hardcover, 192 pages
ISBN-10: 0470947802
ISBN-13: 978-0470947807
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons












"The obstacles that those who live and die on the Serengeti face are, in many ways, no different than the challenges we face at the office or at home every day", writes successful business person, widely traveled public speaker, and visionary real estate trend watcher Stefan Swanepoel, in his fascinating and perceptive business parable Surviving Your Serengeti: 7 Skills to Master Business and Life. The author shares the personal journey toward self discovery of corporate executive Sean Spencer, as he embarks upon a three day safari in Africa's Serengeti plain.

Stefan Swanepoel describes how Sean Spencer, cut off from the usual trappings and intense communications that characterize twenty-first century business, begins to examine the world in entirely new ways. Far from the day to day worries of the office, and the concerns of his life back home, Sean becomes engrossed in the lives of the amazing animals who call the Serengeti their home. The author shows us how Sean begins to recognize the different traits and strategies employed by each animal, as they live their lives in a constant struggle to survive. Told with all of the harshness and the life and death challenges of the thousand mile wildebeest migration intact, the author presents the animals in their daily lives of predator and prey. The insights gleaned by Sean Spencer, in his African sojourn, provide him with a more clear understanding of the skills necessary for finding business success, and for achieving a richer personal life.



Stefan Swanepoel (photo left) has lived among the animals of Africa, and has returned to the vast and harsh Serengeti, and recognizes the strategies utilized by each species to survive in that unforgiving land. The author shares these concepts through the experiences of the corporate executive, as he becomes more aware of the world around him, and that within himself. The insights gleaned by Sean Spencer, in his African sojourn, provide him with a more clear understanding of the skills necessary for finding business success, and for achieving a richer personal life. The various animal survival strategies include:

* The strategic Lion
* The enterprising Crocodile
* The efficient Cheetah
* The enduring Wildebeest
* The risk taking Mongoose
* The communicating Elephant
* The graceful Giraffe

These survival traits are proven and effective in one of the harshest of environments on Earth. The author provides them as models for achieving more success and fulfillment in business and in life.

For me, the power of the book is how Stefan Swanepoel puts his wide knowledge of the animals of the Serengeti to good use as models of various survival strategies. Each species of animal has different characteristics, they also utilize different means of overcoming the life and death challenges of their inhospitable land. Each strategy is different, but is highly effective for survival. Their different techniques of hunting or of avoiding becoming prey form a powerful metaphor for life in the modern world. Just as their is a wide variety of animals in Africa, so too is there a range of personalities in the world of business. Each individual must discover the strategy that works best for survival and success in the corporate Serengeti. The same tactics that work for the strategic lion are not well suited to the graceful giraffe. Different people require their own personal strategies as well.

Stefan Swanepoel's concept of describing the Serengeti survival strategies in the form of a business parable gives the book an immediacy and an instant connection with the reader. The animals of Africa, and their lives in very difficult conditions, might not be the most obvious parallel to the twenty-first century business environment. As a result, the business fable approach transforms the animals into potent and effective metaphors for business strategies. The eye opening experiences of protagonist Sean Spencer, and his journey of self discovery, reflects the need of everyone to uncover their own personal journey. With the various wildlife strategies in place, the reader is able to discern their own personal tactics for their own wildebeest migratory trek.

I highly recommend the unique and inspirational book Surviving Your Serengeti: 7 Skills to Master Business and Life by Stefan Swanepoel, to anyone seeking a profound and enjoyable guide to overcoming both business and personal obstacles. While the corporate world may not contain literal lions, cheetahs, elephants, or crocodiles, their human counterparts are very much a part of that business landscape.

Read the enjoyable and intriguing book Surviving Your Serengeti: 7 Skills to Master Business and Life by Stefan Swanepoel, and discover your own inner animal traits and strategies. While you might not ever live out the survival drama of the |Serengeti, the concepts in this book will hone your survival skills for the challenges of the corporate jungle or the voyage of your personal. This book is a certain to be a classic, and read for a very long time.

Tags: Surviving Your Serengeti: 7 Skills to Master Business and Life, Stefan Swanepoel, enhanced management strategies, business book reviews.

Rebooting the American Dream by Thom Hartmann - Book review

Rebooting the American Dream

11 Ways to Rebuild Our Country

By: Thom Hartmann

Published: October 11, 2010
Format: Hardcover, 200 pages
ISBN-10: 1605097063
ISBN-13: 978-1605097060
Publisher: Berrett-Koehler Publishers









"When Washington became President in 1789, most of America's personal and industrial products of any significance were manufactured in England or its colonies. Washington asked his Treasury Secretary, Alexander Hamilton, what could be done about that, and Hamilton came up with an 11-point plan to foster American manufacturing, which he presented to Congress in 1791. By 1793, most of his points had either been made into law by Congress or formulated into policy by either President Washington or the various states, which put the country on a path of developing its industrial base and generating the largest source of federal revenue for more than a hundred years", writes serial entrepreneur, and America's leading progressive talk radio host, Thom Hartmann, in his visionary and provocative book Rebooting the American Dream: 11 Ways to Rebuild Our Country. Drawing on the ideas and achievements of Alexander Hamilton, the author describes his own eleven proven ways to rebuild the American economy, and to rebuild and strengthen the nation's middle class.

Thom Hartmann points out that American has entered a decline phase since 1980, and its once vaunted manufacturing sector has been decimated. Along with the loss of manufacturing, the American middle class has begun to shrink in size. With that decline in the middle class, the author writes that the United States is now a much less egalitarian society. He also notes that with the real decline in middle class wages, America has a weakened economy and the lowest level of social mobility in the industrialized world. With these sobering concepts in mind, Thom Hartmann offers what he considers to be reasonable and proven economic and political policies to revive the American economy. With that economic renewal, the middle class will increase in numbers and return to its position of the backbone of the American economy. Thom Hartmann's vision is one of a strong American economy, based on manufacturing and small business, that benefits all members of society.



Thom Hartmann (photo left) takes a careful examination of the economic history of the United States. Following the lead of Alexander Hamilton, the author proposes rebuilding the nation's industrial and manufacturing base through the introduction of tariffs. While controversial, and even anathema to free traders, the author describes their effectiveness in China and other countries where they have been adopted as policy. In effect, writes the author, China has adopted Alexander Hamilton's economic program. The eleven points recommended by Thom Hartmann run counter to the now conventional wisdom that took root in the Ronald Reagan Administration. The author describes those policies as not only destructive to the middle class and the economy, but are leading directly to the decline of the United States overall. The policies presented in the book, ranging from higher tax rates, to rebuilding small communities, to less reliance on imported oil, to enhancing affordable public education, to extending Medicare to everyone, to forcing members of Congress to display their funding sources, to ending illegal immigration, and ending the concept of corporate personhood. The end result of the adoption of the program, writes Thom Hartmann, is a stronger economy and less stratified society.

For me, the power of the book is how Thom Hartmann makes a bold and impassioned case for rebuilding the American economy. The eleven point program recommended by Thom Hartmann is a non-partisan plan. The ideas presented in the book have all been suggested by both Democrats and Republicans at one time or another. Where the author diverges from mainstream political platforms is his holistic approach to revitalizing the American economy. By creating an overall economic blueprint, in the same manner as Alexander Hamilton, Thom Hartmann goes beyond the typical political rhetoric, and the often much more specialized approach taken by mainstream economists. While the overall message of the book is progressive in nature, the policy proposals are backed by the real world experience of American history.

Thom Hartmann writes that his economic points have worked well in the past, and he believes firmly that they will work again. To achieve consensus acceptance and application of the eleven points, however, the author points out that Americans must get past the failed policies of the last three decades. Thom Hartmann considers Reaganomics and supply side theory to be a dismal failure. He points to the obvious dismantling of the American manufacturing base, as well as the shrinking of the middle class, as evidence. He goes much farther than most prescriptions, and proposes far reaching legislative, legal, and fiscal policy change. The author even suggests the co-operative business model, along with a revival of small independent business, as additional boosts to the overall economy. Whether a person agrees with Thom Hartmann's policy proposals or not, this book is without a doubt worth reading. It is one of those rare books that can even change a person's mind on various economic and legislative policy positions.

I highly recommend the important and very iconoclastic book Rebooting the American Dream: 11 Ways to Rebuild Our Country by Thom Hartmann, to anyone serious about rebuilding the American economy and strengthening and returning the middle class to its position of prominence in the United States. Regardless of a person's political or economic beliefs, this book is a must read, and will be an eye opening experience for the vast majority of Americans.

Read the impassioned and certain to be controversial book Rebooting the American Dream: 11 Ways to Rebuild Our Country by Thom Hartmann, and reconsider the proven policies and economy building concepts first proposed by Alexander Hamilton over two hundred years ago. These ideas built the United States into the most powerful country the world has ever known. Those same policies, writes Thom Hartmann, can provide the same spectacular economic growth again, if given the opportunity. This book is a call to action for all Americans.

Tags: Rebooting the American Dream: 11 Ways to Rebuild Our Country, Thom Hartmann, American economic renewal, economics book reviews.

Josh Kaufman: The Personal MBA - Master the Art Of Business - Blog Business Success Radio

Listen to Wayne Hurlbert on Blog Talk Radio



Independent business educator, and author of the valuable and information packed book The Personal MBA: Master the Art of Business, Josh Kaufman, describes why the conventional MBA degree is a waste of time and money. Josh Kaufman points out that MBA students are taught outdated ideas with out-moded methods, and then graduated into the real world of business where those concepts do not apply. Instead of relying on business schools, Josh demonstrates that true leaders make themselves through lifelong learning and experience. In place of MBA programs, Josh Kaufman teaches the essential skills that work in the real world of business.

Josh Kaufman is my internet radio show guest on Blog Business Success; hosted live on BlogTalkRadio.

The show airs live on Thursday, January 20, at 8:00 pm Eastern Time; 5:00 pm Pacific Time.

Independent business educator, and author of the valuable and information packed book The Personal MBA: Master the Art of Business, Josh Kaufman, describes why the conventional MBA degree is a waste of time and money. You will learn:

* Why the traditional MBA degree may be a waste of time and money

* What the business schools don't teach about the way business really works

* How to get the essential knowledge to become a good business leader

* Why great leaders make themselves, and are not a byproduct of a business degree



Josh Kaufman (photo left) is an independent business professor, education activist, and author of The Personal MBA: Master the Art of Business.

Josh’s unique, multidisciplinary approach to business education has helped hundreds of thousands of readers around the world master foundational business concepts on their own terms, and his work has been featured in BusinessWeek and Fast Company, as well as by influential websites like Lifehacker, HarvardBusiness.org, Cool Tools, and Seth Godin’s Blog.

Since creating the Personal MBA business self-education program in 2005, Josh has:

* Read thousands of books related to business, economics, psychology, communication, mathematics, science, and systems theory.
* Synthesized the essentials of sound business practice into a comprehensive, world-class program, which is available to students, entrepreneurs, and business professionals all over the world.
* Created the Personal MBA recommended reading list, which features the 99 best business books available to the DIY business student. The Personal MBA reading list and manifesto has been viewed by hundreds of thousands of readers from around the world.
* Saved prospective MBA students millions of dollars in tuition, fees, and interest by providing an effective and affordable means of learning fundamental business principles without mortgaging their future earnings.
* Helped hundreds of first-time entrepreneurs, CEOs, research scientists, programmers, and non-profit founders improve their business knowledge and skills via innovative online courses and 1-on-1 coaching.
* Inspired an active community of self-motivated business learners around the world.

Prior to developing the Personal MBA full-time, Josh worked as an Assistant Brand Manager in Procter & Gamble’s Home Care division, where he was responsible for projects that encompassed P&G’s entire value chain, from new product development to delivering in-store marketing campaigns for key customers like Wal-Mart, Target, and Costco. Before leaving P&G, Josh spearheaded the development of P&G’s global online marketing measurement strategy.

Josh received his BBA from the University of Cincinnati Lindner School of Business in 2005, where he studied Business Information Systems, Real Estate, and Aristotelian/Stoic Philosophy. He is 28 years old, an Eagle Scout (Boy Scouts of America), an active entrepreneur, and a pro-am photographer. The Personal MBA: Master the Art of Business is his first book.

My book review of The Personal MBA: Master the Art of Business by Josh Kaufman.

Listen live on Thursday at 8:00 pm Eastern, 5:00 pm Pacific time.



If you miss this very informative show, it will be available for free download as a podcast for iPod, iTunes, and MP3 players; or play it right on your computer. To download this, or any other of my guest interviews, go to the Blog Business Success host page and click on Archived Segments. Once there, click on the podcast icon at the end of the episode description, to download the show free of charge for your listening enjoyment. You can also subscribe to the show feed.



To call in questions for my guest, the number is: (347) 996-5832

Let's talk with independent business educator, and author of the valuable and information packed book The Personal MBA: Master the Art of Business, Josh Kaufman, as he describes why the conventional MBA degree is a waste of time and money. Josh Kaufman points out that MBA students are taught outdated ideas with out-moded methods, and then graduated into the real world of business where those concepts do not apply. Instead of relying on business schools, Josh demonstrates that true leaders make themselves through lifelong learning and experience. In place of MBA programs, Josh Kaufman teaches the essential skills that work in the real world of business on Blog Business Success Radio.

Tags: The Personal MBA: Master the Art of Business, Josh Kaufman, enhanced management strategies, Blog Business Success, Blog Talk Radio.

The Personal MBA by Josh Kaufman - Book review

The Personal MBA

Master the Art of Business

By: Josh Kaufman

Published: December 30, 2010
Format: Hardcover, 416 pages
ISBN-10: 1591843529
ISBN-13: 978-1591843528
Publisher: Portfolio/Penguin













"One of the beautiful things about learning any subject is the fact that you don't need to know everything - you only need to understand a few critically important concepts that provide most of the value", writes independent business educator Josh Kaufman, in his valuable and information packed book The Personal MBA: Master the Art of Business. The author describes how to focus on learning and understanding the information that is most important for operating a business, without spending large amounts of time and money on an MBA degree.

Josh Kaufman recognizes that a business person doesn't have to be knowledgeable in every aspect of business theory. Instead, he provides an outline of business as practiced in the real world. For the author, the traditional MBA program offers an outdated curriculum that doesn't teach the students how business really works. Josh Kaufman maintains that true business leadership is not created in business schools. Instead, leaders make themselves through a combination of skills, knowledge, and on the job experience. At the same time, Josh Kaufman offers more than simply the standard business school education as a gateway into corporate middle management. The author also shares his knowledge and experience in entrepreneurship, start-ups, and the area of sales that is so often overlooked in academia



Josh Kaufman (photo left) understands that business school credentials will provide access to recruiters from major corporations. For Josh Kaufman, the cost of an MBA degree is more of an expensive and time consuming ticket to a job interview, than real business knowledge. The author points to the over use of case studies, where their sanitized situations and solutions, bear little resemblance to problems confronting managers and entrepreneurs in the real world of business. Instead of what Josh Kaufman considers an assembly line style of learning, he shares useful and practical knowledge and ideas that solve real problems. The author doesn't teach the widely taught Quantitative Analysis, Financial Analysis, and Accounting. Instead, he focuses on how businesses work and how to run them. For more detail and study on the standard business school subjects, Josh Kaufman suggests some books, should the need for such specialized knowledge arise.

For me, the power of the book is how Josh Kaufman distills the essentials of business knowledge into one book. By placing his emphasis on how business works, how people work, and how systems work, the author guides the reader toward what is really important in owning or managing a successful company. One of the real values of the book is how Josh Kaufman provides key sections of the book on psychology, and how people think and work. This human side of business is not always given much attention in business school courses, but is a crucial aspect of becoming an effective manager. The author also shares the principle that leaders make themselves, and that leadership is not an automatic byproduct of a business school education.

Josh Kaufman presents his information in an easy to understand, and well organized format. That ability to organize material, and to separate the critical elements from what is not so important, demonstrate that the author's ideas are sound and reliable. To further illustrate the well organized manner in which the information is presented, Josh Kaufman uses the business concept of mental models. These ideas provide a framework for solid and reliable decision making. As with the entire book, the mental model technique is rooted in the real world of business. The author provides a rare blend of strategies and tactics that work well in one person entrepreneur ventures, or in the very largest global corporations. By thinking in terms of how business really works, Josh Kaufman gives the reader what really matters, and what is really needed in the way of knowledge, to be a successful business leader.

I highly recommend the very practical and knowledge filled book The Personal MBA: Master the Art of Business by Josh kaufman, to anyone seeking to acquire the essential knowledge for managing a successful company, without spending a small fortune on an MBA degree. This book is one that will stay on an manager's book shelf, and be read over and over again when the need for useful information arises.

Read the better than business school book The Personal MBA: Master the Art of Business by Josh Kaufman, and discover how business really works, and learn what a manager and business leader really needs to know and understand. This is a very valuable book that you will want to read and refer to, over and over again.

Tags: The Personal MBA: Master the Art of Business, Josh Kaufman, enhanced management strategies, business book reviews.

Dan Gardner: Future Babble - Why Expert Predictions Fail - Blog Business Success radio

Listen to Wayne Hurlbert on Blog Talk Radio



Award winning investigative journalist with the Ottawa Citizen, and author of the well researched and insightful book Future Babble: Why Expert Predictions Fail - and Why We Believe Them Anyway, Dan Gardner, describes how so many predictions made by experts are often so wrong. The forecasts are not only wrong, but also very wildly incorrect. Despite that dismal track record, people still turn to experts for predictions about the future. Dan Gardner attributes this dependence on experts as one of seeking the feeling of security. Even though expert opinions are less reliable than flipping a coin, the most famous experts are usually the least accurate and reliable. Dan Gardner explains why the future is always uncertain, but fortunately, the end is not near.

Dan Gardner is my internet radio show guest on Blog Business Success; hosted live on BlogTalkRadio.

The show airs live on Tuesday, January 18, at 8:00 pm Eastern Time; 5:00 pm Pacific Time.

Award winning investigative journalist with the Ottawa Citizen, and author of the well researched and insightful book Future Babble: Why Expert Predictions Fail - and Why We Believe Them Anyway, Dan Gardner, describes how so many predictions made by experts are often so wrong. Youwill learn:

* Why the well known experts are so often very wrong in their forecasts

* Why people feel the need to listen to and believe the experts

* How to tell whether an expert's prediction has any basis in fact

* How to do a better job of forecasting the future than the leading experts



Dan Gardner (photo left) is a journalist, author, and lecturer who enjoys nothing so much as writing about himself in the third person.

Trained in law (LL.B., Osgoode Hall Law School, Class of '92) and history (M.A., York University, '95), Dan first worked as a political staffer to a prominent politician. In 1997, he joined the editorial board of the Ottawa Citizen. His writing has won or been nominated for most major prizes in Canadian journalism, including the National Newspaper Award, the Michener Award, the Canadian Association of Journalists award, the Amnesty International Canada Media Award for reporting on human rights, and a long list of other awards, particularly in the field of criminal justice and law. Today, he is an opinion columnist who refuses to be pigeonholed as a liberal or a conservative and is positively allergic to all varieties of dogma. If you must label him -- and he'd rather you didn't -- please call him a "skeptic."

In 2005, Dan attended a lecture by renowned psychologist Paul Slovic. It was a life-changing encounter. Fascinated by Slovic's work, Dan immersed himself in the scientific literature. The result was a seminal book on risk perception, Risk: The Science and Politics of Fear. Published in 11 countries and 7 languages, Risk was a bestseller in the United Kingdom and Canada. But more gratifying to Dan was the support of leading researchers, including Slovic, who praised the book's scientific accuracy.

In his latest book, Future Babble: Why Expert Predictions Fail - and Why We Believe Them Anyway, Dan delved deeper into psychology to explain why people continue to put so much stock in expert predictions despite the repeated -- and sometimes catastrophic -- failure of efforts to forecast the future. Again, Dan was delighted that his book garnered the praise of leading researchers, including Philip Tetlock of the University of California, who called it "superb scholarship," and Steven Pinker of Harvard University, who said it should be "required reading for journalists, politicians, academics, and those who listen to them."

Psychology is fundamentally about how people perceive, think, decide, and communicate -- and modern research shows that much of what people assume to be true about these basic processes is, in fact, wrong. The success of Risk led Dan to develop a series of lectures that expose and correct those assumptions, helping people think, decide, organize, and communicate better.

Dan Gardner lives in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, with three young children and one exhausted wife.

My book review of Future Babble: Why Expert Predictions Fail - and Why We Believe Them Anyway by Dan Gardner.

Listen live on Tuesday at 8:00 pm Eastern, 5:00 pm Pacific time.



If you miss this very informative show, it will be available for free download as a podcast for iPod, iTunes, and MP3 players; or play it right on your computer. To download this, or any other of my guest interviews, go to the Blog Business Success host page and click on Archived Segments. Once there, click on the podcast icon at the end of the episode description, to download the show free of charge for your listening enjoyment. You can also subscribe to the show feed.



To call in questions for my guest, the number is: (347) 996-5832

Let's talk with award winning investigative journalist with the Ottawa Citizen, and author of the well researched and insightful book Future Babble: Why Expert Predictions Fail - and Why We Believe Them Anyway, Dan Gardner, as he describes how so many predictions made by experts are often so wrong. The forecasts are not only wrong, but also very wildly incorrect. Despite that dismal track record, people still turn to experts for predictions about the future. Dan Gardner attributes this dependence on experts as one of seeking the feeling of security. Even though expert opinions are less reliable than flipping a coin, the most famous experts are usually the least accurate and reliable. Dan Gardner explains why the future is always uncertain, but fortunately, the end is not near on Blog Business Success Radio.

Tags: Future Babble: Why Expert Predictions Fail - and Why We Believe Them Anyway, Dan Gardner, forecasting the future, Blog Business Success, Blog Talk Radio.

Future Babble by Dan Gardner - Book review

Future Babble

Why Expert Predictions Fail - and Why We Believe Them Anyway

By: Dan Gardner

Published: October 12, 2010
Format: Hardcover, 320 pages
ISBN: 978-0-7710-3519-7
Publisher: McClelland & Stewart













"The desire to know the future is universal and constant, as the profusion of soothsaying techniques in human culture - from goats' entrails to tea leaves - demonstrates so well", writes award winning columnist and investigative journalist with the Ottawa Citizen, Dan Gardner, writes in his well researched and insightful book Future Babble: Why Expert Predictions Fail - and Why We Believe Them Anyway. The author describes how those trusted experts are often very wrong in their forecasts and predictions, but the general public continues to put great faith in those same experts anyway.

Dan Gardner recognizes that despite being continually and often wildly inaccurate in their forecasts, expert forecasts and predictions never lose their widespread appeal. Dan Gardner sets out to discover why experts fail to forecast the future very well. The author also seeks to explain why people listen to and believe those same failed experts despite their dismal track record. The author points to how the reliance upon experts, and the deep desire to believe them, is a very human foible. People want to know the future, good or bad, and if some expert can remove even a portion of that uncertainty, the expert's forecast will be believed and internalized. The desire to remove uncertainty causes people to act and behave irrationally, but for them, the removal of that sense of uncertainty provides a measure of control. That feeling of control over events is an illusion, for both the expert and the general public, and can result in disappointment or even disaster.



Dan Gardner (photo left) understands the paradox of wanting to understand the future and trust placed in experts, and the constant disappointment and dissatisfaction that results from a failed prediction or forecast. Dan Gardner shows the reader where and why experts go so far wrong in their predictions, and guides the average person to a deeper understanding of how to better prepare for what amounts to an unknowable future. The author draws on the research of University of California professor Philip Tetlock, who demonstrated that the more famous the pundit and expert, the less accurate the predictions made by that person. This unsettling information provides Dan Gardner with his own tests and questions to consider when a person hears a forecast from a well known expert. Armed with this skeptical, yet discerning recommendation, anyone can bypass the excuses, half truths, and rationalizations that help maintain the expert's reputation despite their very wrong predictions.

For me, the power of the book is how Dan Gardner challenges the generally held assumption that experts are more able to forecast the future than the average person. The author combines leading edge research into the nature and accuracy of expert forecasts with humorous examples of pundit predictions gone very awry. Dan Gardner points to the experts' own rationalizations as only part of the reason they continue to enthrall the public. The people listening to the predictions not only want to believe them, but need to believe them, to assuage their own fears of an uncertain future. People don't like uncertainty, and as the author writes, even entirely wrong, and supposed certainty is considered better than no certainty at all.

Dan Gardner achieves what few authors are able to do in their books. He discovers and writes something new, fresh, and enlightening. Dan Gardner demonstrates that a person need not fear the future, or listen to the most optimistic or pessimistic forecasts. Instead, the author invites and challenges his readers to test the expert's ideas with revealing and illuminating questions. Through a combination of research theory and real world results, Dan Gardner lays bare the real truth about the alleged experts. They are often very wrong, and usually no more likely to be able to predict the future than simply tossing a coin. The author teaches his readers how to identify fatal flaws in expert forecasts, and even how to recognize the different types of prognosticators as they weave their outlooks on the future. This book will guide the reader toward removing the fear of uncertainty, while avoiding the blind belief in a supposed expert, who is just as likely to be completely wrong as even remotely accurate.

I highly recommend the the must read and essential book Future Babble: Why Expert Predictions Fail - and Why We Believe Them Anyway by Dan Gardner, to anyone seeking to discover the real truth behind the so-called experts and their often highly touted forecasts. Dan Gardner shows the reader how difficult forecasting the future really is, and why it's important for the average person to take a more critical view of the word of the supposed experts.

Read the delightful and challenging book Future Babble: Why Expert Predictions Fail - and Why We Believe Them Anyway by Dan Gardner, and learn why experts are so often wrong, and why it doesn't really matter. The future is isn't that scary that certainty is required. Let the events of the future happen, and ignore the experts. They don't know any more about what will take place than the average person on the street.

Tags: Future Babble: Why Expert Predictions Fail - and Why We Believe Them Anyway, Dan Gardner, forecasting the future, economics book reviews.