With the monthly full money extra, I'm Chris Hill. Every year there are thousands of acquisitions

made in the business world. Across every industry, companies look to grow by buying other

companies. How well does that strategy work? Dan Heath, along with his brother Chip, has

co-authored some of the most popular business books of the past decade, including decisive

how to make better choices in life and work. And unfortunately, as Dan points out, most

companies think the way that teenagers think. So this relates to what psychologists call

narrow framing. And the research is just very eye-opening on this. And I think we can

all relate to this from our own experience in life, that what people tend to do when

they make decisions is they tend to put blinders on and obsess about a single option that's

on the table. We call this a whether or not decision. So when we're struggling with

something, for teenagers, it's deciding whether or not to go to the party tonight, whether

or not to smoke this thing or not. Whether or not to be friends with this person or

not, whether or not to send this image over social media. And of course, the flaw with

that is obvious, that when we're thinking about one option and the only real decision we're

making is yes or no, do it, don't do it, we're leaving off all of the spectrum of possibilities

that would be available to us. And organizations make exactly the same mistake again and again

and again. And the research of a guy named Paul Nut confirms that the percentage of time

that organizations make whether or not decisions is almost indistinguishable from the amount

of time teenagers do it. And you can see this most vividly in mergers and acquisitions.

So the research has been absolutely clear on this for decades. A good rule of thumb is if

you're considering acquiring a company, don't. Because the majority of them create no value

and in fact, roughly have to destroy value. And this hasn't changed very much, but it still

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