Olivier Sibony

Thinker
Olivier Sibony

Even the Experts Need Help

Intro

Olivier Sibony is an expert strategic thinker, a well-known writer, a keynote speaker and a consultant whose insights have helped people improve the quality of their decision-making skills. The French strategy specialist has dedicated his career to coming up with practical tools and solutions to help people make the best decisions possible, which he communicates in various books, lectures and academic papers. By helping powerful business people and managers realize the cognitive biases and thinking traps that we are all susceptible to, Sibony has placed himself as a master of behavioral science who is able to give advice on when to trust our instincts and when we need to resist them.

He is particularly interested in uncovering the heuristics involved in real-life management, which, unlike the textbooks students read, involve complex, uncertain and ambiguous situations. Wanting to better capture the real-life circumstances under which people make decisions, his ideas emphasize the need for individuals to gain behavioral science knowledge alongside industry-specific knowledge.

A wise leader, therefore, does not see herself as someone who simply makes sound decisions; because she realizes she can never, on her own, be an optimal decision maker, she views herself as a decision architect in charge of designing her organization’s decision-making process.


– Olivier Sibony, in his book You’re About to Make a Terrible Mistake: How Biases Distort Decision-Making and What You Can Do to Fight Them 1

About the Authors

A man in a blue, striped shirt smiles while standing indoors, surrounded by green plants and modern office decor.

Dan Pilat

Dan is a Co-Founder and Managing Director at The Decision Lab. He is a bestselling author of Intention - a book he wrote with Wiley on the mindful application of behavioral science in organizations. Dan has a background in organizational decision making, with a BComm in Decision & Information Systems from McGill University. He has worked on enterprise-level behavioral architecture at TD Securities and BMO Capital Markets, where he advised management on the implementation of systems processing billions of dollars per week. Driven by an appetite for the latest in technology, Dan created a course on business intelligence and lectured at McGill University, and has applied behavioral science to topics such as augmented and virtual reality.

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Dr. Sekoul Krastev

Sekoul is a Co-Founder and Managing Director at The Decision Lab. He is a bestselling author of Intention - a book he wrote with Wiley on the mindful application of behavioral science in organizations. A decision scientist with a PhD in Decision Neuroscience from McGill University, Sekoul's work has been featured in peer-reviewed journals and has been presented at conferences around the world. Sekoul previously advised management on innovation and engagement strategy at The Boston Consulting Group as well as on online media strategy at Google. He has a deep interest in the applications of behavioral science to new technology and has published on these topics in places such as the Huffington Post and Strategy & Business.

About us

We are the leading applied research & innovation consultancy

Our insights are leveraged by the most ambitious organizations

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I was blown away with their application and translation of behavioral science into practice. They took a very complex ecosystem and created a series of interventions using an innovative mix of the latest research and creative client co-creation. I was so impressed at the final product they created, which was hugely comprehensive despite the large scope of the client being of the world's most far-reaching and best known consumer brands. I'm excited to see what we can create together in the future.

Heather McKee

BEHAVIORAL SCIENTIST

GLOBAL COFFEEHOUSE CHAIN PROJECT

OUR CLIENT SUCCESS

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Annual Revenue Increase

By launching a behavioral science practice at the core of the organization, we helped one of the largest insurers in North America realize $30M increase in annual revenue.

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Increase in Monthly Users

By redesigning North America's first national digital platform for mental health, we achieved a 52% lift in monthly users and an 83% improvement on clinical assessment.

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Reduction In Design Time

By designing a new process and getting buy-in from the C-Suite team, we helped one of the largest smartphone manufacturers in the world reduce software design time by 75%.

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Reduction in Client Drop-Off

By implementing targeted nudges based on proactive interventions, we reduced drop-off rates for 450,000 clients belonging to USA's oldest debt consolidation organizations by 46%

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