Davos and Groupthink

Reflecting on the Davos meetings, Business Week Editor-in-Chief Stephen Adler has some interesting thoughts on how many people may be jumping the gun when trying to explain the events surrounding the global economic crisis. As Adler writes, "Beware conventional wisdom and groupthink. Be skeptical of tidy explanations for complex past events.Be even more skeptical of confident predictions of future human behavior. Don't fight the last war." Those words ring so true, not just with regard to the economic crisis, but with regard to many failures that we encounter in business.