Mgt

Grade: B-

Overall comments

· Please double-check that there is no unnecessary summarizing of the four articles/chapters. Ideally, per article/chapter, it’s best to state the causal claim you critique in 1-2 sentences in the very beginning of the paragraph, and then spend the rest of the paragraph explaining why/how the critical thinking tool at hand applies to the causal claim. As a result, your paper should have a total of four paragraphs.

· For each of the four paragraphs in your article, make sure that you state the claim first, and then talk about the critical thinking tool—not the other way around.

· The page limit is 2 pages. If you end up exceeding this as you revise your paper, you can cut down on paper length significantly by minimizing the amount of space you devote to summarizing the articles. Also, if you state your name, name of the course, and so on in the text of the paper, get rid of all of that and instead simply put down your full name in the header of the paper. Finally, remove any introduction and/or conclusion in the paper. It’s only necessary to have four paragraphs (one paragraph per article/chapter).

· Make sure that you use wording that implies less certainty (e.g., may, might, possibly, perhaps, likely), rather than stating that a claim is definitively wrong or misleading. For example, instead of stating “This claim is incorrect because it suffers from ambiguous causality,” state “This claim in potentially incorrect because it may suffer from ambiguous causality.” This is because you are not conducting your own studies to back up your claim or citing well-established studies. Rather, you are simply raising various possibilities as to why the claim per article/chapter might be wrong/misleading.

Specific comments for first article: “1. Ericsson et al. (2007, HBR) – Deliberate practice”

· Please double-check that the claim you are addressing for this article is the following: The author claims that deliberate practice can be adapted to developing business and leadership expertise.

· Please double-check that the critical thinking tool you are using for this article is the following: Lack of practical utility.

· Your paragraph about this first article should include one or more of the following discussion points (but not necessarily all of them):

· Have you considered the possibility that there are not many opportunities to engage in deliberate practice in certain jobs? The very long and stressful work hours in a job may not allow the individual to engage in much deliberate practice (e.g., investment banker).

· What if you are a working parent of multiple children, and your spouse works too? Would that impact your ability and/or motivation to engage in deliberate practice?

· Have you considered the possibility that deliberate practice in certain jobs would not be appropriate because it could lead to dire negative consequences? For example, a surgeon does not have the luxury of practicing deliberately on his patients. It would be more important to successfully complete the surgery by relying on the surgeon’s existing strengths rather than trying to improve on his weaknesses (which likely lead to mistakes, some of which can be fatal).

Specific comments for second article: “2. Gladwell (Dec 15, 2008) – Predicting performance”

· Please double-check that the claim you are addressing for this article is the following: The author claims that predicting quarterback performance in the NFL is inherently unpredictable (i.e., the profession should keep the gates wide open).

· Please double-check that the critical thinking tool you are using for this article is the following: Misinterpretation of evidence

· Your paragraph about this second article should include one or more of the following discussion points (but not necessarily all of them)::

· Could it be that quarterback performance in the NFL only seems unpredictable because scouts (such as Shonka) are assessing college players in an unstructured manner? For example, did the scout apply the same criteria (i.e., ask the same questions) to each college player assessed? Did he exhibit any instances of favoritism or favorable cognitive biases toward certain players?

· Could it be that scouts incorrectly believe that NFL quarterback performance is unpredictable because they are ignoring the effects of range restriction? In the article, the scout appears to only observe college players who have the potential to join the NFL and, therefore, who are perhaps all similarly leveled in their very high skills. At the same time, the scout is overlooking those who may be less talented and not on most teams’ scouting report. As a result of this range restriction, the true correlation between college performance and NFL performance is highly deflated from the scout’s perspective, making it appear that NFL quarterback performance is inherently unpredictable.

· Could it be that scouts were simply not fully using the information available to them, and this is why they mistakenly think that NFL quarterback performance is unpredictable? For instance, the article states that when the spread offense broke down and the college quarterback was under pressure, the college player faced a similar situation that he would in the NFL. So, scouts observe these types of plays to better predict how one would perform under the pressure similar in the NFL.

Latest feed back for revised version:Regarding the paragraph for the second article (where you are required to use the misinterpretation of evidence argument), please incorporate and further polish the range restriction argument. That is, please make it clearer how in reality there could be a (strong) positive correlation between X (college quarterback performance) and Y (and NFL quarterback performance), such that there is a group of data points scattered around a roughly 45-degree linear line. But even if this is the case, zooming in on a small ucpper right part of the scatterplot (thereby restricting the range of X and Y) would misleadingly suggest a weak positive or zero correlation. If this is what the scouts are doing by focusing only on the top, elite, or cream-of-the-crop college quarterback players, then their claim that NFL quarterback performance is unpredictable may be suffering from range restriction. 4/26/2018

Specific comments for third article: “3. Gladwell (2008, Outliers) – Practical intelligence”

· Please double-check that the claim you are addressing for this article is the following: The author claims that IQ alone cannot explain who succeeds and who does not and that job knowledge also counts above and beyond IQ.

· Please double-check that the critical thinking tool you are using for this article is the following: Narrative fallacy

· Your paragraph about this third article should include all of the following discussion points:

· By telling a vivid and entertaining story, the author is leading the readers to believe his claims are true because it applies to the story.

· The author almost exclusively relies on story-telling (involving two unusual individuals) rather than primarily relying on rigorous scientific evidence (e.g., tables, numbers, presentation of multiple studies, meta-analyses).

· The story presented in the article can be considered to be an extreme case due to each individual’s high IQ and might not apply to an average person with high or low (but still pretty non-extreme) IQ. In other words, don't you think it's odd that he just had to pick two super-duper geniuses (i.e., extreme outliers) to tell his story?

Specific comments for fourth article: “4. Gladwell (2002) - Talent myth”

· Please double-check that the claim you are addressing for this article is the following: The author claims that the talent mind-set caused Enron’s decline

· Please double-check that the critical thinking tool you are using for this article is the following: Ambiguous causality —specifically, the third/confound variable argument

· Your paragraph about this fourth/last article should include all of the following discussion points:

· Discuss how the potential confound variable you identify led to both the talent mindset and Enron’s decline. You need to devote 2-3 sentences per linkage.

· Explicitly describe how “C” (a third/confound variable) might have caused “A” (the talent mindset). For instance (you don’t have to use this example by the way—it’s just an illustration), poor leadership by top management could have caused the company to focus on the (natural) talent of individuals. Instead of rewarding their hardest workers, Enron highlighted people who had a higher IQ or were better educated. With this happening, the company stopped doing performance evaluations based on pure performance; there was a lot of unnecessary background information added to the equation.

· Explicitly describe how “C” (a third/confound variable) might have caused “B” (the decline of Enron). For example (you don’t have to use this example), poor leadership by top management may have led to committing fraud and several acts of corruption, which could have primarily led to the downfall of Enron. Think about this, and I suggest you incorporate this discussion into your paragraph here.

· If you argued that the potential confound variable (“C”) led to the talent mindset (“A”), which in turn led to Enron’s decline (“B”), then this is not the correct application of the third/confound variable argument. Instead, you need to show how C led to A and how C led to B, separately.

· I would suggest that you still acknowledge that A could have had at least a small bit of effect on B. That is, the talent mind-set could have had a small effect on the downfall of Enron. Just because there is likely a “C” affecting both A and B, this does not necessarily mean there is zero relationship between A and B (A’s effect on B may be highly inflated, but not completely explained away, by the presence of C).

Latest feed back for revised version : Regarding the paragraph for the fourth article (where you are required to use the confound variable argument), please make sure and double-check that you’re devoting about 2-3 sentences to talk about how the confound variable (“C”) could’ve led to the talent mindset (“A”), and another separate 2-3 sentences discussing how “C” could’ve led to Enron’s decline (“B”). These two groups of sentences should be making separate/distinct arguments; for example, it is incorrect to say that C could’ve led to A, which in turn led to B.

Final comments

· In conclusion, the purpose of this key assignment is for you to practice your critical thinking skills. That is, for each article/chapter, your job is to write a paragraph where you identify a causal claim and then critique the claim by using a critical thinking tool.

· Once again, the written instructions for the assignment can be found on the last seven slides in the “Personality (session B).pptx” slide deck. And, for additional details on how to apply each critical thinking tool we learned in class, please see the slide deck named “2_Critical thinking.pptx.”

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