Coming Soon!
How Smart People Think
and Make Predictably Bad Decisions
This second volume explores the hidden forces that skew our decisions — from manipulation and incentives to reputation, framing, urgency, and other cognitive bias. Across 16 standalone chapters, you’ll learn why smart people get misled, how your environment shapes your choices, and how to reclaim independent judgment in a noisy world.
Early Reader:
What’s inside:
Chapter 1: Why We’re So Easily Manipulated
Chapter 2: When Incentives Weaken Moral Accountability
Chapter 3: When Good Enough Isn’t
Chapter 4: When Reputation Trumps Reason
Chapter 5: Breaking News, Broken Context
Chapter 6: Politics and Moral Shortcuts
Chapter 7: Why It’s Dangerous to Follow the Crowd
Chapter 8: I’ve Been Framed
Chapter 9: The Push to Buy Now — Manufactured Urgency & Scarcity
Chapter 10: When Commitment Becomes a Cage
Chapter 11: Top Five Internet Scams
Chapter 12: Built‑In Persuasion
Chapter 13: Self‑Help & Gurus
Chapter 14: Speed Kills
Chapter 15: Reclaiming Independent Judgment
Chapter 16: Who’s Zooming Who?
Download Chapter 1:
The Author:
Dick Richardson is a seasoned leadership expert whose career blends innovation, resilience, and a deep understanding of how adults learn. He spent decades shaping leadership development at IBM and ITT, pioneering experiential learning and earning two patents in adult learning design. His work has influenced leaders across Asia, North America, and Europe.
After retiring from IBM, Dick founded Experience to Lead, creating immersive programs that brought executives behind the scenes at NASA, the Smithsonian, and other iconic institutions. His programs helped leaders draw powerful lessons from high‑stakes environments, earning recognition from organizations like Goldman Sachs, Amazon, the Federal Reserve Board, and the Royal Bank of Canada. He was honored as the 2019 Gold Stevie® Award Entrepreneur of the Year.
Join the smarter‑thinking movement
The How Smart People Think series is designed to help business professionals make better decisions and improve their overall thinking. Each book uses practical mental models and real‑world examples to reveal the shortcuts our brains take — and how those shortcuts can quietly distort judgment.
You don’t need to read the series in order. In fact, you don’t even need to read the chapters in order. Every chapter is short, digestible, and self‑contained, so you can simply choose the topic that sparks your curiosity. A typical reading session — including reflection — takes about 10 to 25 minutes.
This is not a textbook. Mental models and cognitive biases are woven into real stories, business cases, and everyday situations, with concepts introduced naturally rather than explained academically. Each book also includes a bonus link for readers who purchased a copy, giving access to additional tools and resources.
The series will include five books:
Book 1 (available now): How Smart People Think — Simple Frameworks for Better Business Decisions
Book 2: How Smart People Think — Understanding What Skews Your Judgment (available for advanced review copies)
Book 3: How Smart People Think — Simple Frameworks for Better Business Relationships
Book 4: How Smart People Think — Simple Frameworks for Better Business Management
Book 5: How Smart People Think — Simple Frameworks for Business Leaders
Each book stands on its own — read one, read all, or jump between chapters. The goal is simple: help you think more clearly, decide more effectively, and navigate complexity with confidence.
What readers are saying about the series
“How Smart People Think: Simple Framewoks for Better Business Decisions” — available now on Amazon.
As Seen In...
In How Smart People Think, Dick Richardson guides us through a challenge we all face, often without even being aware of it.
He also equips us to rise to it. This book is a must-read tour-de-force in personal empowerment. Richardson has curated a collection of powerful mental models and, more importantly, breathes life into them with vivid real-world examples to show us how these models can lead to genuine personal transformation.
This book is filled with a wide variety of mental models that help the reader think more clearly and precisely about problems they may face in their own personal growth and in working with others. Each model is succinctly explained, followed by a multitude of examples of people and organizations who have used these models to achieve success. Examples are also given where lack of use of this model led to a personal or business failure. Dick also cross-references the models to show how other models could complement or perhaps replace the model they are currently using to analyze a situation or problem.
“Thinking”, said Henry Ford, “is the hardest work there is, which is probably the reason why so few engage in it.” Dick Richardson’s book How Smart People Think gives all of us an edge in thinking. Dick has catalogued dozens of mental models then shows how people applied those models to real-world problems and then acted on their decision to change history. Thinking is a craft, and Dick provides a set of tools so we can sharpen our approach to thinking.
For anyone who wants to solve problems this book is an indispensable guide. This is not just a book, it’s a catalyst for better thinking
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