Jeff Pfeffer at BNET: When Will We Ever Learn?

My colleague and close friend Jeff Pfeffer is now writing some stuff at BNET.  You might not always agree with Jeff (I sure don't, our motto when we write together is "when two people always agree, one of them is unnecessary" or "the more we fight, the better we write"), but Jeff is deeply smart and loves being irreverent.  I will try to figure out how to link to the set of columns, but I really liked this one called "When Will We Ever Learn."  Jeff describes three (evidence-based) reasons that people are so bad at learning from past mistakes: Lack of focus on understanding failure, over-reliance on compensation as a management tool, and hubris.  I might add confirmation bias (people see, remember, and believe evidence that fits their biases much better than evidence that clashes) and "rosy retrospection," the tendency to forget the bad and remember the good about the past (even good things that didn't ever really happen).