Why Smart Leaders Make Bad Decisions – And What You Can Learn from Their Mistakes

There's a scenario that keeps repeating itself in today's business climate. A company is voted one of the most admired in the world. Three or four years later, it's in dire financial trouble, in the midst of a disastrous merger, or some other fiasco. What goes wrong in these cases?

Just as puzzling as the fact that brilliant managers can make bad mistakes is that instead of rectifying their mistakes, business leaders regularly make them worse.

In this class, Tuck Professor Sydney Finkelstein will present his findings from 20 years of research on what goes wrong in organizations. You’ll learn the key lessons from management failures, and what they mean for anyone looking to become an effective leader. Find out how to analyze failure and use the lessons learned to develop practical, constructive strategies for success.

Sydney Finkelstein is Professor of Management at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth. He is an expert on leadership and strategy, executive decision making, and mergers and acquisitions. Sydney is Faculty Director of the flagship Tuck Executive Program and teaches in many of Tuck’s core strategic leadership programs. Professor Finkelstein has spent the past 20 years researching what good leaders do to succeed – as well as what causes leadership breakdowns. He has published 17 books, including Why Smart Executives Fail—a #1 bestseller in the U.S. and Japan—and Think Again: Why Good Leaders Make Bad Decisions and How to Keep It From Happening to You (2009).