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Patrick Ashby co-founded his non-profit VISO, the Voluntary Initiative Support Organization, in 2004 to focus on countering violent extremism in Northern Uganda, a region racked by nearly 20 years of civil war and a recent influx of over one million Sudanese refugees. The area, he says, is now plagued by “strife between the communities, high unemployment, and now climate change...

Around the world, high school seniors --and their parents--are receiving decisions about applications for early admission to college. Some of these emails will elicit joy, but many more will cause students anxiety. Students who don’t get into their ED school will now face making a big decision on a tight deadline: where do you apply now, and to how many...

How do we build trust with other stakeholders when making decisions? It was a question that an official at the State Department asked me to address last month when she invited me to speak to a group of foreign counter-terrorism experts from around the world. The official came to me after reading about my book Problem Solved. She felt my…

As the stock market has been taking a wild ride these past few weeks, I’ve been finishing up a new book, currently titled Investing In Financial Research: A Decision Making System For Better Results. It is scheduled to be published in the fall. It’s an updated general interest version of the textbook I wrote initially for my Columbia Business School…

Recently there’s a lot of evidence of high profile strategy failures, whether it’s the health care overhaul in Congress, the inability of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries to bolster oil prices by cutting supplies, or disappointments from hot start-up initial public offerings like photo-sharing app maker SNAP and meal-kit service Blue Apron. It’s not that these organizations lack strategy....

What do President Trump and New England Patriot’s quarterback Tom Brady have in common? A knack for rapid decision making. That’s a risky proposition, given that decision making for complex issues deserves time and attention. But that’s also in part why Sunday’s Super Bowl was so exciting and why our President’s recent actions are so problematic. During the Super Bowl…

I was recently honored to speak at the Milken Institute London Summit on the Future Of Europe after Brexit and the overwhelming takeaway that I came home with is this: European politicians and pundits said that they regretted their ‘assumption’ that globalization was going to be the rising tide that lifts all boats. The assumption, they said, was that “better…

In life things are not always as they seem. But in today’s fast paced world we tend to rush to judgement. We let assumptions and biases guide our actions and our perception of the world. War provides a stark example of the false stories that we accept all too quickly and with deadly consequences. For example, The New York Times…

The NBA’s Milwaukee Bucks aren’t a very good basketball team – yet. The team is in the rebuilding phase and in the 2015-16 season yielded only 33 wins and 49 losses, not good enough for the playoffs. In the spring draft a few weeks ago, the team drafted Thon Maker, a player born in the Sudan. While Maker has a…

I read in a newspaper article this week that this year is the 150th anniversary of Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s masterpiece Crime and Punishment.  I first read this gripping novel in high school, but now, decades later, I still recall it vividly. And I’m obviously not alone. This classic was so popular when it first came out after the destitute Dostoyevsky feverishly…