I have been reading about Behavioural Economics (and Behavioural Finance) through the excellent 8-minute summaries from iminds.com. BE explains why we are systemically and predictably irrational in our economic decisions and introduces 2 terms "Bounded Rationality" and "Bounded Willpower" as limits to rationality within which we all operate.

I am working through an intriguing book How the way we talk can change the way we work written by two psychologists of adult learning at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. The authors contend that we are naturally immune to any form of change (with our systems quickly rejecting casual changes) and to make change in ourselves and others we must learn 7 new languages (ways) to think and talk about change.

Fabio Padilla from Brazil has written a very interesting review of Bioteams for his MBA thesis at the Universidade Católica de Brasilia - Universa. Fabio has very kindly allowed me to republish a summary of his conclusions which he has translated from the original Portuguese.

In the recent UK floods we heard a lot about defences failing and phrases being bandied about by engineers and managers such as "a once in a hundred years" event and "could never have been envisaged." However when I hear these types of explanations it always makes me think instead of the crucial differences between a promise, a responsibility and a guarantee.

Strategy and Business Magazine has just published an excellent in-depth article "The Dueling Myths of Business" based on the work of scenario planning expert Betty Sue Flowers who worked with Royal Dutch Shell PLC and the world of big government where she helped draft many influential scenario planning reports.

In "Surviving Survival" Laurence Gonzales looks deeply into the mental processes that enable us to cope with the trauma that often sets in during and after a challenge to our survival. In the final chapter of the book, The Rules of Life, Gonzales outlines 12 key principles of resilience and survival:

ISEE Systems, a leading developer of business simulation tools, have published reviews of two of the new Bioteams online/offline collaboration games developed using the ithink platform. These team games enable companies to share their own best practice (learn from others) in a way that really sticks and to put staff into difficult but realistic decision-making situations where if they make a mistake it does not cost the business!

There are two neat tools you can use to quickly turn excel spreadsheets into online simulations, what-if models and dashboards. They are Simulate from Forio and Crystal Presentation Design (formerly known as xcelsius) from SAP. Here's the lowdown.