Noise: A Flaw in Human Judgment

Once again, Kahneman and his co-authors have written a book on an interesting and highly applicable topic which affects our lives on a daily basis. They do a good job of providing a background for their work and supporting their thoughts throughout with compelling evidence an analysis.

While this book might be interesting if you’re new to the topic, it unfortunately falls short of our expectations based on Kahneman’s previous work which we have reviewed. While we appreciate the emphasis of having an evidence backed thesis, much of the book is focused on describing multiple experiments which prove that people are biased and don’t act rationally or make the right judgements all the time. The rest of the books is a discussion about the fact that that mood, weather and other factors create noise and effect our judgements. Unfortunately, for how in depth this book is, it really doesn’t provide many useful insights especially to those who have read Kahneman’s seminal piece: Thinking Fast and Slow.

“This compelling book shows how to connect the image you present to the outside world with the values and norms that operate inside your world of work.”

–Adam Grant, New York Times bestselling author of Originals and Give and Take

“Denise Lee Yohn hit a home run with her first book, What Great Brands Do. Now she’s written FUSION and it is just as provocative. Denise proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that great companies are powered by brand-culture fusion. I highly recommend this book!”

–Ken Blanchard, Coauthor, The New One Minute Manager®, Coeditor, Servant Leadership in Action

Internal culture + External brand = FUSION

For years, leaders at companies like Southwest, Starbucks, and Google have done something differently that’s put their organizations at the top of “the most admired companies,” “best brands,” and “great workplaces” lists. They don’t often talk about that “something” specifically in terms of brand-culture fusion, but, as author Denise Lee Yohn reveals, aligning and integrating their brands and cultures is precisely how they’ve achieved their successes.

Independently, brand and culture are powerful, unsung business drivers. But Denise shows that when you fuse the two together to create an interdependent and mutually reinforcing relationship between them, you create organizational power that isn’t possible by simply cultivating one or the other alone. Through detailed case studies from some of the world’s greatest companies (including Amazon, Airbnb, Adobe, Nike, and Salesforce), exclusive interviews with company executives, and insights from Denise’s 25+ years working with world-class brands, FUSION provides readers with a roadmap for increasing competitiveness, creating measurable value for customers and employees, and future-proofing their business.

This is a must-read for readers interested in workplace culture, brand management, strategy, leadership, employee experience, employee engagement, integration, branding, and organization development.

For anybody else genuinely curious about why and how people make the decision they do, reading Kahneman’s papers and books will provide you with a plethora of insights and groundbreaking thoughts which will help you garner a clearer understanding of human behavior and decision making.