Foundational Ideas
Curated summaries of influential books in behavioral science, psychology, behavioral economics, and organizational research. Each piece distills core principles and translates them into practical insight for HR practitioners seeking to design fairer, more defensible people decisions.
Decision Scenarios
Explore specific operational decision challenges, diagnostic indicators, and governance rules.
Sarah Miller's The Science of Motivation: Applying Self-Determination Theory to Total Rewards
A behavioral science-grounded explanation of the fundamental psychological needs that drive sustainable motivation and performance at work.
Read More →Daniel Pink's Drive: Why Autonomy, Mastery, and Purpose Outperform Financial Incentives
A behavioral science-backed explanation of why autonomy, mastery, and purpose outperform traditional rewards in driving sustained performance.
Read More →The Arbinger Institute's The Outward Mindset: Overcoming Self-Focus to Build Accountable Teams
A practical framework explaining how shifting from a self-focused mindset to an other-aware orientation transforms collaboration, accountability, and organizational performance.
Read More →Daniel Coyle's The Culture Code: Building Psychological Safety and Group Cohesion
An exploration of how successful groups build trust, belonging, and shared purpose through everyday behavioral signals.
Read More →Laszlo Bock's Work Rules!: Evidence-Based People Operations and Decision Governance
A data-driven blueprint for building high-performance organizations by redesigning people practices around trust, transparency, and evidence.
Read More →Amy Edmondson's The Fearless Organization: How Psychological Safety Drives Team Performance
An evidence-based exploration of psychological safety and why fear suppresses learning, performance, and ethical behavior in organizations.
Read More →Alfie Kohn's Punished by Rewards: Why Pay-for-Performance Systems Fail
A rigorous critique of performance-contingent pay systems and why financial incentives undermine intrinsic motivation, collaboration, and long-term quality.
Read More →Philip Tetlock's Superforecasting: Probabilistic Thinking for People Analytics
A data-driven exploration of how certain individuals consistently make better predictions by thinking probabilistically and updating beliefs.
Read More →Kahneman's Thinking, Fast and Slow: Overcoming System 1 Biases in People Decisions
A foundational behavioral science framework explaining how human judgment and decision-making are shaped by two competing modes of thinking.
Read More →Russ Harris's The Confidence Gap: Action-Oriented Frameworks for Leadership Development
A psychologically grounded guide to understanding why confidence is not a prerequisite for action and how skillful behavior matters more than self-belief.
Read More →William Mobley's Employee Turnover Model: Understanding the Cognitive Withdrawal Process
A process view of employee turnover examining how job dissatisfaction translates into withdrawal cognitions, search behavior, evaluation of alternatives, and departure.
Read More →James Price's The Study of Turnover: Structural Determinants of Employee Attrition
A foundational work examining how organizational determinants, job satisfaction, and opportunity shape employee turnover patterns across work environments.
Read More →Hom & Griffeth's Employee Turnover: Avoidable vs. Unavoidable Attrition Models
A comprehensive synthesis of turnover research examining multiple turnover models, avoidable vs. unavoidable attrition, and multi-lens diagnostic approaches.
Read More →Hom & Allen's Employee Retention and Turnover: Job Embeddedness and Why Employees Stay
A modern synthesis of retention research examining job embeddedness, proximal withdrawal states, context-emergent turnover, and the distinct mechanisms of staying vs. leaving.
Read More →Chip & Dan Heath's Decisive: Applying the WRAP Decision Framework to HR Governance
A practical framework introducing the WRAP model to counter cognitive biases, widen options, reality-test assumptions, attain distance, and prepare for uncertainty in decision-making.
Read More →Annie Duke's Thinking in Bets: Separating Decision Quality from Outcomes in HR
A framework for separating decision quality from outcome quality, embracing uncertainty, and avoiding resulting bias in organizational judgment.
Read More →Nate Silver's The Signal and the Noise: Calibrating Predictive Confidence in People Analytics
A foundational guide to forecasting and predictive analytics, explaining how to distinguish meaningful signal from random noise, calibrate confidence, and embrace uncertainty in workforce data.
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