Author: Anonymous

You are assigned to lead a group in a brainstorming session…

You are assigned to lead a group in a brainstorming session to generate new solutions to increasing sales across retail stores.  a) What common biases or heuristics might lead the group to generate fewer and less creative solutions than those generated by “nominal” groups? How would you structure the brainstorming session to avoid this problem and maximize possible solutions generated? b) One team member pointed out that the few smaller stores of the company are over-represented among the top performers, and suggested a strategy of reducing the number of large stores and increasing the number of small boutique stores. Would you take their advice? Why or why not? How would test for the merit of this claim? c) After deliberation, your team decides to launch an online marketing campaign which is similar to what other firms have implemented in the past. The data from previous campaigns suggest a large return of investment. Specifically, many of the purchases were made after consumers saw the ad. However, the data are historical and you suspect that they may overestimate effect of ads on consumer purchases. If you can design an experiment to test the causal effect of the ad campaign, how would you do it?

Imagine that you work in a large organization and that the o…

Imagine that you work in a large organization and that the organization makes the same personnel selection decisions every year. Candidates are screened by trained HR managers and those who make the cut are interviewed by a single HR manager. You have noticed that the managers are often surprised by the decisions of their colleagues, but your boss is unconcerned about potential disagreement, because all of the HR managers are highly experienced.  a) How would you convince your boss that the potential disagreement could be costly to the organization? Assuming that they and the HR managers are on board, how would you conduct a noise audit?  b) How would you measure within-person noise? How would you measure between-person-noise? Which type of noise is more problematic? c) Assuming that the noise in judgments is worrisome for the organization, what procedures would you recommend to reduce the noise and maximize your chances to hire the best candidates?