Nuala Walsh

About Nuala Walsh

Walsh, one of 5 girls from Dublin, was Educated at Our Lady’s School, Templeogue before she studied for a BA at Trinity College Dublin, specialising in French and Philosophy. She quips, “I wasn't going to be a French philosopher so I went to UCD and did the Diploma in Business Studies followed by the Masters where I specialized in international marketing.”

That decision in retrospect seems wise as she went straight from UCD into PA Consulting Group, where she worked on strategy and business transformation which set her up for a robust career pathway. She then moved to London and worked on projects industrywide including a one-year assignment for the World Bank in Africa to re-engineer the Bank of Tanzania. She next joined Merrill Lynch and its fintech group in the debt capital markets division at a time when fintech was not particularly trendy, unlike today. She eventually made her way to their investment management division.

“I held various corporate strategy, sales and marketing roles,” she explains. Then Merrill Lynch International Management was taken over by Blackrock. What was great for Walsh during this period was that an important association with sports sponsorship began with the ATP tennis ‘tour of champions’ event, involving superstars John McEnroe and Bjorn Borg. This was the start of an almost 2-decade sports journey.

This leads Walsh to mention an idea of a career ‘springboard’ and how one role can catapult you into a related area. For instance, her spell in Africa led to a board role with charity Action Aid which led her to the role of vice-chair at UN Women (UK). Similarly, she sponsored tennis and now advises global clients across sport. 

After Merrill Lynch and Blackrock, next up was a move to Edinburgh, Scotland, where she took up a role with Standard Life Investments as global head of client relations and later as chief marketing officer. Walsh acknowledges she is probably different to many in that sector in terms of personality.

“I guess I'm not a classic investment person. I don't love the markets as passionately as some others. In another world, I'd be on location in Hollywood or in a court of law,” she explains. “It's only now that I'm doing what I'm really interested in.”

“After school, I went to Trinity, but I had been offered psychology in UCD which I turned down. I even studied forensic psychology in the evenings at the NCIR.”

“I spent 30 years in corporate life but about 5 years ago, I went back to school and did a Masters in behavioural science at the London School of Economics.”  

Shortly after, she founded her own consulting practice, Mind Equity, where she provides behaviourally informed solutions to airlines, banks, human rights organisations, distribution and sports brands on commercial or ethical matters.

Her passion project is her new book called Tune In: How to Make Smarter Decisions in a Noisy World, which comes with hefty endorsements from sporting stars like golfer Paul McGinley and Olympic medallist Sebastian Coe as well as renowned New York Times bestselling academics like Adam Grant and Robert Cialdini. and even an FBI investigator.

However, the author herself is the best advocate for the book.

“I always said I would write something like my own version of Mark McCormack’s ‘What They Didn’t Teach You at Harvard Business School’ with 50 lessons learned,” which is how she explains the genesis of the book. But this changed. 

The result is a science-led book about tone-deaf leadership and the crisis of misinformation and misjudgement in a tuned-out world. Think increasing misconduct, scandals, scams, polarisation, failed governance and miscarriages of justice. Naturally, serial killers are included to illustrate the power of misjudgement.

“I wanted to prevent people from making predictable mistakes by highlighting the underlying causes. We have 200 biases and 75 of these are triggered in certain situations. I've wrapped these in a framework of 10 Misjudgement Traps reflected in the mnemonic PERIMETERS - power, ego, risk, identity, memory, ethics, time, emotion, relationships and stories. Each trap contains 7 or 8 associated biases. It’s quite a neat science-based framework and the first in the field to explode the concept of ‘deaf spots’ as a source of error.” she explains. 

She shares why she sees TUNE IN as an insurance policy against misjudgement and a practical reference manual. “When making a high-stakes decision, if you reflect and sense check which trap is most dominant, you can probe deeper into which bias is most likely to be triggered before screening the menu of 18 easy-to-use solutions. In that way, it's a practical go-to guide,” she says.

She has come a long way from her UCD experience but still remembers it fondly at this remove.  “The Masters group was very special. I'm still very good friends with people from that class. Some of them have gone on to do really great things,” she suggests. What does she recall? “I remember my friends, I remember finishing, I remember the people I was competing against. But I can't say too much in case they read your article,” she laughs. 

Walsh admits she is competitive, although concedes she didn’t realise this for a while. “You don't see it in yourself. When I was writing the book, I just wanted to get my best effort published. I didn’t care about sales or media exposure. Now suddenly, I'm watching the Amazon rankings.” Even though the book was a #1 New Release in nine categories, she says she has nothing to prove to anyone anymore - except maybe to herself.

As for modern decision making, she says making the right decisions is becoming harder. “We live in a noisy fast-paced world and increasingly tune out what matters. There is so much information and opinion out there, people feel they have to express theirs. It’s harder to filter through the noise so we rush to judgment and take things at face value creating errors that destroy lives and livelihoods,” she explains.

“People think that more information means better decisions, and it doesn't. Psychologist Philip Tetlock proved that people are no more accurate in their forecasts with 88 variables than they are with 5. So when you consider the urge to ‘give me more data’, that will not necessarily equate to more decision security. More data is a false certainty,” she points out.

One of Walsh’s own big strategic decisions was at Standard Life Investments and its ground-breaking sponsorship of the Ryder Cup in 2014 and 2016. It was the first global deal in the Ryder Cup’s 100-year history. Walsh says it was one of the more exciting periods of her career. That’s when she wasn’t interviewing Bill Clinton and Neil Armstrong.

“I think the Ryder Cup almost gave more joy to the employees than it did to clients. Company pride was enormous and we replicated that sentiment later with the British and Irish Lions rugby sponsorship”.

“While incredibly smart, this Scottish based investment company didn't have huge confidence on the global stage. Then there they were, suddenly sponsoring the Ryder Cup. One of my abiding memories was seeing the beaming CEO walking inside the ropes and being at the 1st tee at 5 o'clock in the morning with my team,” she recalls. 

Not that Walsh is slowing down very much. “I do several things now – advising clients at MindEquity, sitting on boards, speaking, teaching and writing. There’s also the regular publications for Inc, Forbes and Psychology Today,” she adds. A TEDx speaker, her talk on indecision also reaches millions.

As President of the Harvard Club of Ireland, she runs a monthly program on judgement and decision-making for alumni and was recently appointed adjunct professor at Trinity College teaching behavioural science in their school of medicine. “In some ways, my life has come full circle,” she says.

Commercially, she sits on several boards including as an independent non-executive director at the British & Irish Lions and Basketball Ireland; she is Chair of the Innocence Project London and Vice-chair of the Inclusion Advisory Board at the English Football Association.

She laughs at the variety of it all. “I'm not sure what's ahead. But I can tell you what's ahead next month, and that's a well-earned holiday”.

Insight Track

Reflecting on your time at UCD, what experience stands out as particularly impactful or memorable?

It was more work and less play so my strongest recollection is the end of term rather than any highlight in between. On the day of the exam results, my mother drove me to UCD and I remember getting back to the car to give her the good news. She worked in Jefferson Smurfit at the time and bursting with pride, she handed me her entire week's wage packet which was a small brown envelope with Irish punts. I was to get myself a present! 

Is there a particular book or song you have carried with you for much of your life? 

I don’t have a single book as I have a library full of them and as time passes, each takes on more or less significance. When I first started my career, I thought that management books were the go-to sources of Oracle-filled wisdom. I recall the wisdom of Frank Maguire’s “You’re the Greatest.”  Since then, “Think Fast Think Slow” from the late Nobel Prize winner Daniel Kahneman stands out. I find different books fill a need at a given stage of life. I think it's the same with music. 

What's the best piece of advice you've ever received, funny or serious?

I don't think there is a single best piece of advice as its utility differs by the situation you're facing. So for example, in the last phase of my corporate career, I took note when a Head of HR told me that the rules change at board level, something I did not know and proved to be accurate. Before that, a CEO asked me what I wanted to do, not what I wanted to be - that was a mindset shift.  

What's a hobby or activity you've always wanted to try but haven't gotten around to yet?

When I was younger, I played the piano to Grade 7 and I haven’t done so for decades. For a while, I've thought about taking this up again and I’m hoping to do so at some stage. It would literally be like starting from scratch.

If you could have a conversation with any historical figure, who would it be and what would you ask that person?

As I recently visited the Lorraine Motel in downtown Memphis where Martin Luther King Jr was assassinated, I would ask what was it that kept him fearless and hopeful in his fight for civil rights, despite the setbacks and evident risks he faced. 

July 2024