Yesterday, I started playing around with the idea of doing rationality business consulting.
My basic idea is as follows. Use my contacts to get in touch with a number of suitable companies and offer to hold them a free presentation on rationality ideas. If they agree, hold a lecture maybe an hour long, packed full of interesting and obviously valuable concepts thrown at the audience at a rapid pace. At the end, thank them for their time, take any questions they might have, and mention that I also have an extended lecture series prepared that covers these topics in more detail, and many others besides. Offer to hold those lectures in exchange for a sizable sum, or if they’re not interested, ask them if they could at least recommend me to somebody who might be.
If I just have a good enough presentation, act confident enough and price myself appropriately, it seems to me like this should result in sales pretty quickly. And presentations are one of the few areas where I don’t have issues with confidence—if I’ve practiced a lecture enough and know the content, I get more excited than nervous.
I’ve scribbled down some random ideas on content to be included in my opening lecture: this is still a very rough draft, with ideas chosen more or less at random as they came to mind, but feedback is more than welcome.
If a debate is becoming confrontational, adopt a rule saying that each debate partner must start their comment by briefly recapping what the other person just said. This helps to both make sure that they understood correctly, and to convince the other that their point was heard and understood. Studies show that this reduces the amount of time debates on average take.
How to improve company atmosphere: status games and offense
Humans constantly play various status games with each other, often more or less unconsciously. Becoming more aware of the status games helps take them less seriously. Impro has a lot of status game exercises that can be used to make people more aware of them.
A major reason for people taking offense is that they think their status is being lowered. If everyone understands this, it can help defuse conflicts as it becomes easier to make explicit the reasons for being offended. “I experienced X as offensive because I felt that it implied I wasn’t good at Y, and that I therefore wasn’t of much value.” “Oh, I didn’t mean that.”
The ABC of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy: Activating Event, Belief, Consequence. A boss asks “have you done the task I gave you, the deadline is approaching?”, the subordinate believes this to mean that the boss doesn’t trust his ability to get things done without micromanagement, gets depressed. CBT attacks the “Belief” stage and encourages one to ask whether the beliefs are reasonable.
Verbal self-defense: ways to deflect hostile statements so that they don’t escalate into conflict.
(This section was written when I just started coming up with ideas one after another and stopped trying to sort them or make them very comprehensible to outsiders, so don’t worry if you don’t understand all of the points.)
59 seconds
Robbins: coloring memories, other things
Radical Honesty? Perhaps something a bit less radical...
commitment effects
beware identity
Goertzel’s quote on identity
self-signaling
success spirals
Mindset
PJ Eby on Akrasia, lukeprog on procrastination, procrastination book
sick relationships
life hacker?
“think of the opposite”; bayes’ theorem in everyday life
what intelligence tests miss
what data generated that thought
that one paper on an ideal working environment
flow
psychology of happiness and well-being; the 3-1 rule
pjeby: instant motivation
prediction markets?
humans are not automatically strategic
relating to the curse of identity: analyzing the concrete consequences of decisions, the effect of social norms on decision-making (school example), charity examples, scope neglect, political ignorance
expected utility
value of information? decision analysis sequence?
bureaucracies and avoiding responsibility
status quo bias; groupthink; review meetings; devil’s advocates
fundamental attribution error & benefit of doubt
taboo your words
the content hilighted in the comments for the various “what’s been the most useful LW insight to you” posts
You’ll notice that I also have a lot of content that’s not strictly rationality-related. That’s intentional: I figure that having useful insights on a wide variety of topics will seem more impressive and increase the likelihood that at least something in there does catch one’s interest. (Also, I wrote in more detail about the non-rationality stuff because for the rationality stuff I could just link to the LW posts.)
My guess is that thematic unity is important; it’s good to have “insights into a wide variety of [business problems]”, but you want those insights to seem to come from a unified source, so that the person ends up with some clear, vivid association with you (“Kaj: rational decision-making”) instead of associating you with a random hodge-podge of key words.
Do you have friends who are in your target audience, so that you can give them two-sentence descriptions of each of your potential themes and see which ones they’re excited about?
Do you know anyone who does business consulting for money, who you could ask questions of? I don’t know how often people make money for lectures, vs. for the sort of “consulting” where they listen to folks’ particular problems, and try to help them with them?
It sounds worth pursuing, anyhow—the idea of “rationality business consulting” has been batted around for a while, and it would be great if someone actually tries it.
Good points, thanks. I believe I’ll start with the “traditional” rationality stuff at first, since it’s easier to give the impression of everything coming from a unified source that way. Also, I know it better than the other stuff.
I spoke to some friends who are familiar with this kind of thing, and one offered to give me feedback (both on the content, and for my presentation style) as well as possibly put me in contact with people who might be interested. I think I’ll re-read What Intelligence Tests Miss as well as skim through a couple of other books on rationality that I haven’t yet read, and then see what kinds of presentation ideas strike me as good.
They did mention that what I’m talking about is really more lecturing than consulting, but they say there’s good money to be had that way too—presuming that I have the patience to build up a favorable reputation and references.
You should take a look at what existing executive coaches, business coaches, business consultants, and management training programs do. There are some of these that actually apply the methods of decision analysis to their clients’ problems, or teach their clients how to do so. Here are some that I have encountered:
Hubbard Decision Research. Training, consulting, and tools for difficult measurement, forecasting and investment decisions facing organizations, using Applied Information Economics (basically, decision analysis with an emphasis on expected value of information and applying statistical methods to indirectly measure things that are not obviously measurable.)
HeadScratchers. Critical thinking workshops and coaching for problem solving, decision making and creativity.
Baker Street Publishing. They sell various publications for decision coaches, management consultants, and strategic planners.
Solysis. Consulting for organizations, decision coaching for executives.
Executive Decision Making (Professional Development course from Cornell)
Online organizational decision making course from Van Thinking
Strategic Decision Making, upcoming 5-day workshop from the London School of Economics and Political Science.
Yesterday, I started playing around with the idea of doing rationality business consulting.
My basic idea is as follows. Use my contacts to get in touch with a number of suitable companies and offer to hold them a free presentation on rationality ideas. If they agree, hold a lecture maybe an hour long, packed full of interesting and obviously valuable concepts thrown at the audience at a rapid pace. At the end, thank them for their time, take any questions they might have, and mention that I also have an extended lecture series prepared that covers these topics in more detail, and many others besides. Offer to hold those lectures in exchange for a sizable sum, or if they’re not interested, ask them if they could at least recommend me to somebody who might be.
If I just have a good enough presentation, act confident enough and price myself appropriately, it seems to me like this should result in sales pretty quickly. And presentations are one of the few areas where I don’t have issues with confidence—if I’ve practiced a lecture enough and know the content, I get more excited than nervous.
I’ve scribbled down some random ideas on content to be included in my opening lecture: this is still a very rough draft, with ideas chosen more or less at random as they came to mind, but feedback is more than welcome.
How to act and decide better
Inside/outside views
Checklists
The conjunction fallacy
How to communicate better
Take inferential distances into account
The illusion of transparency
Explainers shoot high, aim low
Be specific
Hold off proposing solutions
If a debate is becoming confrontational, adopt a rule saying that each debate partner must start their comment by briefly recapping what the other person just said. This helps to both make sure that they understood correctly, and to convince the other that their point was heard and understood. Studies show that this reduces the amount of time debates on average take.
How to improve company atmosphere: status games and offense
Humans constantly play various status games with each other, often more or less unconsciously. Becoming more aware of the status games helps take them less seriously. Impro has a lot of status game exercises that can be used to make people more aware of them.
A major reason for people taking offense is that they think their status is being lowered. If everyone understands this, it can help defuse conflicts as it becomes easier to make explicit the reasons for being offended. “I experienced X as offensive because I felt that it implied I wasn’t good at Y, and that I therefore wasn’t of much value.” “Oh, I didn’t mean that.”
The ABC of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy: Activating Event, Belief, Consequence. A boss asks “have you done the task I gave you, the deadline is approaching?”, the subordinate believes this to mean that the boss doesn’t trust his ability to get things done without micromanagement, gets depressed. CBT attacks the “Belief” stage and encourages one to ask whether the beliefs are reasonable.
Verbal self-defense: ways to deflect hostile statements so that they don’t escalate into conflict.
Various cultural differences that may lead to conflict, e.g. askers versus guessers.
Other
Signaling and the damage done by excess signaling; The Curse of Identity
Other, completely unorganized
(This section was written when I just started coming up with ideas one after another and stopped trying to sort them or make them very comprehensible to outsiders, so don’t worry if you don’t understand all of the points.)
59 seconds
Robbins: coloring memories, other things
Radical Honesty? Perhaps something a bit less radical...
commitment effects
beware identity
Goertzel’s quote on identity
self-signaling
success spirals
Mindset
PJ Eby on Akrasia, lukeprog on procrastination, procrastination book
sick relationships
life hacker?
“think of the opposite”; bayes’ theorem in everyday life
what intelligence tests miss
what data generated that thought
that one paper on an ideal working environment
flow
psychology of happiness and well-being; the 3-1 rule
pjeby: instant motivation
prediction markets?
humans are not automatically strategic
relating to the curse of identity: analyzing the concrete consequences of decisions, the effect of social norms on decision-making (school example), charity examples, scope neglect, political ignorance
expected utility
value of information? decision analysis sequence?
bureaucracies and avoiding responsibility
status quo bias; groupthink; review meetings; devil’s advocates
fundamental attribution error & benefit of doubt
taboo your words
the content hilighted in the comments for the various “what’s been the most useful LW insight to you” posts
You’ll notice that I also have a lot of content that’s not strictly rationality-related. That’s intentional: I figure that having useful insights on a wide variety of topics will seem more impressive and increase the likelihood that at least something in there does catch one’s interest. (Also, I wrote in more detail about the non-rationality stuff because for the rationality stuff I could just link to the LW posts.)
My guess is that thematic unity is important; it’s good to have “insights into a wide variety of [business problems]”, but you want those insights to seem to come from a unified source, so that the person ends up with some clear, vivid association with you (“Kaj: rational decision-making”) instead of associating you with a random hodge-podge of key words.
Do you have friends who are in your target audience, so that you can give them two-sentence descriptions of each of your potential themes and see which ones they’re excited about?
Do you know anyone who does business consulting for money, who you could ask questions of? I don’t know how often people make money for lectures, vs. for the sort of “consulting” where they listen to folks’ particular problems, and try to help them with them?
It sounds worth pursuing, anyhow—the idea of “rationality business consulting” has been batted around for a while, and it would be great if someone actually tries it.
Good points, thanks. I believe I’ll start with the “traditional” rationality stuff at first, since it’s easier to give the impression of everything coming from a unified source that way. Also, I know it better than the other stuff.
I spoke to some friends who are familiar with this kind of thing, and one offered to give me feedback (both on the content, and for my presentation style) as well as possibly put me in contact with people who might be interested. I think I’ll re-read What Intelligence Tests Miss as well as skim through a couple of other books on rationality that I haven’t yet read, and then see what kinds of presentation ideas strike me as good.
They did mention that what I’m talking about is really more lecturing than consulting, but they say there’s good money to be had that way too—presuming that I have the patience to build up a favorable reputation and references.
You should take a look at what existing executive coaches, business coaches, business consultants, and management training programs do. There are some of these that actually apply the methods of decision analysis to their clients’ problems, or teach their clients how to do so. Here are some that I have encountered:
Hubbard Decision Research. Training, consulting, and tools for difficult measurement, forecasting and investment decisions facing organizations, using Applied Information Economics (basically, decision analysis with an emphasis on expected value of information and applying statistical methods to indirectly measure things that are not obviously measurable.)
HeadScratchers. Critical thinking workshops and coaching for problem solving, decision making and creativity.
Baker Street Publishing. They sell various publications for decision coaches, management consultants, and strategic planners.
Solysis. Consulting for organizations, decision coaching for executives.
Executive Decision Making (Professional Development course from Cornell)
Online organizational decision making course from Van Thinking
Strategic Decision Making, upcoming 5-day workshop from the London School of Economics and Political Science.
Thanks, I’ll look at those.