Rating: 
Summary: Oversteer
Review: A great book; a keystone of my management science bookshelf that continues to influence my day-to-day thinking 4 years after the first read.This book goes well beyond a mere summary of Dorner's research. His work investigates the fundamental flaw in human behavior that drives us over and over again to make the wrong decisions: oversteer. If you have only 30 minutes, order this book and read just the chapter on Chernobyl-- the only intelligent analysis of the disaster I have ever encountered. Chilling.
Rating:
Summary: Difficult and Vital!
Review: A must read for those who solve problems, or think they solve problems. This book explains why, with the best intentions, those of us who think we help in our interventions into various scenarios, end up more often than not doing more harm. Complex, and difficult to understand at times, the message I received from this book is: Act incrementally when attempting to problem solve. Although, I could stand to read this again, and again, and again.
Rating: 
Summary: Excellent...
Review: book for those who need to understand failure and how to avoid it. First heard about it through a college course as extra reading, now recommend it to colleagues in all disciplines of management.
Rating:
Summary: What makes people poor problem solvers?
Review: Dietrich Dörner is an authority on cognitive behavior and a psychology professor at the University of Bamberg, Germany. His research shows that our habits as problem solvers are typically counterproductive.
Probably our main shortcoming is that we like to oversimplify problems. Dörner offers a long list of self-defeating behaviors, but common to all of them is our reluctance to see any problem is part of a whole system of interacting factors. Any problem is much more complex than we like to believe. And failure doesn't have to come from incompetence. The operators of the Chernobyl reactor, as Dörner points out, were "experts." And as experts, they ignored safety standards because they "knew what they were doing."
Dörner identifies four habits of mind and characteristics of thought that account for the frequency of our failures:
1. The slowness of our thinking-We streamline the process of problem solving to save time and energy.
2. Our wish to feel confident and competent in our problem solving abilities-We try to repeat past successes.
3. Our inability to absorb quickly and retain large amounts of information-We prefer unmoving mental models, which cannot capture a dynamic, ever-changing process.
4. Our tendency to focus on immediately pressing problems-We ignore the problems our solutions will create.
Successful problem solving is so complex that there are no hard-and-fast rules that work all the time. The best take-away from the book (and this is my favorite quote): "An individual's reality model can be right or wrong, complete or incomplete. As a rule it will be both incomplete and wrong, and one would do well to keep that probability in mind." The book is 199 easy-to-read pages, and Dörner gives lots of interesting examples from lab tests illustrating people's actual behavior in problem-solving situations. It's a thought-provoking book for anyone whose job is to tackle complex problems. In one way or another that includes anyone in just about any profession.
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Summary: A must for those interested in Complexity and Systems Theory
Review: Dorner shows that despite all of our intelligence, experience, and information, we all still make mistakes--some with catastrophic results. His examination of the relationship between "mistake" and the "logic of failure" is a means to explore the relationship between simple and complex adaptive systems. Specifically, the "logic of failure" stems from the application of linear, cause-and-effect thinking that is no longer wholly relevant in a world comprised of complex sytems. Instead, we must understand that our patterns of thinking and the resultant behavior are the root cause of our success or failure.
Rating:
Summary: This book is a must for every business manager!
Review: Dörner's book must be considered a very unique work insofar as he has investigated the behaviour and the decision making of people in a number of complex, intransparent, dynamic, and non-linear reality domains. His basic thesis is that humans are obviously not very well equipped for managing these complex structures. This is an exciting hypothesis (and an even more exciting proof) since most business situations are comparable to the experimental settings in thier structure. Doerner gives a lot of examples and recommendations how to overcome the various restrictions of the human system.
Rating:
Summary: Truly a five-star masterpiece!
Review: I picked this book up after hearing a book editor I really respect say he re-reads this great book every few years. And, wow, am I glad I did. What this book talks about is decision-making in situations of complexity, uncertainty and intransparence. The author, Dorner, recounts the results of computer simulations that explore how people succeed and fail in decision making and planning. This is one of those "keepers" that I'll read again and again... and get more from the book each time. Tangential comment: I'm also a writer (my best-selling books have been Quicken for Dummies and QuickBooks for Dummies) and so I have to say that this book is really, really well-written and edited. Wonderful craftsmanship!
Rating:
Summary: Wow! Bloody brilliant!
Review: In clear language citing specific studies and without dogma, Dietrich Dorner, et al, shows why we make the wrong decisions and why, sometimes, we make the right ones. It does not have "An Answer" or even a simple set of rules to follow: different situations call for different responses, and The Logic of Failure clearly explains that.
Rating:
Summary: Wow! Bloody brilliant!
Review: In clear language citing specific studies and without dogma, Dietrich Dorner, et al, shows why we make the wrong decisions and why, sometimes, we make the right ones. It does not have "An Answer" or even a simple set of rules to follow: different situations call for different responses, and The Logic of Failure clearly explains that.
Rating:
Summary: Perfect for managers
Review: In the Logic of Failure, Dietrich Dorner lays out the root causes of decision-making failures in a straightforward, easy-to-read, and even entertaining manner. Dorner covers the psychological and emotional failings that occur when individuals are faced with a myriad of complex systems. Anyone who has been bitten by the law of unintended consequences will see a bit of himself in the pages as Dorner helps one envision the inherent inadequacies that prevent people from predicting and preparing for what becomes painfully obvious in hindsight. Although a bit short on what to do in order to permanently correct the problems identified, simply bringing the pitfalls to light will go a long way to alleviate the problem. This is a must read for managers and strategic planners......perhaps even on an annual basis.
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