Harvard Business School

AM - commute

Ran in and felt good for all of 2ks and then was cactus. Very tired with little sleep this week and the legs were not playing ball. 17k struggle in 4.45s.

PM - strength with Mark P

Focusing on core and glutes. I have neglected this of late but Mark knows his stuff and put me though my paces for 60 minutes. My right knee keeps caving inwards. Need to fix it before I get injured. Pleasingly I got a lot better as the session wore on.

Harvard Business School

Attended a great session today by Mahzarin Banaji from the Harvard Business School - 'The Hidden biases of good people'.

Basically breaking down what our brains are programmed to do and the associated flaws.

Some of my notes:

1. Female named hurricanes kill more people.

Why? People are not as scared and are less likely to evacuate.

2. Recognising talent like never before.

Harvard now takes over 30% of its students from families with income support - it has to in order to recruit the right and best people.  The rule that you get the best candidates from the pool that applies is now totally redundant.  A massive thumbs up for diversity.

3. Attention experiment: counting basketball passes video.
http://youtu.be/nkn3wRyb9Bk

We were asked to count passes of two videos superimposed on top of each other. How many?

4. Technology great at identifying our flaws.

Coupled with diversity (different mind sets) we are more likely to think of new forward thinking things to stay ahead.

5. Experiment - Identical resumes sent out but with changes to name, gender or race.

According to studies black men have the same chance of job success as an equivalent white man with a criminal record! No surprises there.

6. 'The way we are discriminating is by favouring people like us'.

Stats say that job referrals have lower probability of working versus orthodox recruitment.

7. Interviews do not work.

Why? Because people think that by looking at someone they can judge if someone is intelligent, trustworthy etc.

'Our brains are constantly telling us wrong things and will be our undoing!'

8. Eyes further apart equals preconceived assumption of being smart as resembles an android. Conversely closer together not smart!

9. Anyone with a babyface deemed more trustworthy as greater resemblance to innocent children.

10. Conversely because babies are incompetent babyfaces are dubbed less competent.