The Truth About Making Smart Decisions

2008-04-04
The Truth About Making Smart Decisions

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  • Author: Robert E. Gunther
  • Publisher: FT Press
  • ISBN: 0137002092
  • Category : Business & Economics
  • Languages : en
  • Pages : 33

This is the eBook version of the printed book. If the print book includes a CD-ROM, this content is not included within the eBook version. We tend to be somewhat risk averse as a species. We are systematic and logical, which sometimes makes us overcautious. Sure, look a decision squarely in the face. Consider it from every angle, but also focus on the intangibles that might be harder to place into a systematic equation of risks and returns. After you've done a careful analysis, step back. Maybe the crazy decision is the right one. Don't underestimate the power of deciding boldly. These essential truths help you to learn the brave way to make complex and critical decisions.

Smart Decisions

2016-04-29
Smart Decisions

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  • Author: Thomas N. Martin
  • Publisher: Springer
  • ISBN: 1137537000
  • Category : Business & Economics
  • Languages : en
  • Pages : 185

Today's world is complex and getting more so each day. Huge multinational corporations, international crisis and fast breaking events require most people to make decisions on a daily basis without the tools to understand the long term impact that today's decision might create. Because most people have never really been trained in how to make important complex decisions most people rely on experience, and 'gut reaction' which is okay for many decisions, but not okay for decision that will have meaningful impact on organizations and individual. Decision makers need to develop the art and science of strategic decision making. Here, Professor Thomas Martin explains the need for decision makers to modify their thinking about how they deal with acquiring and analyzing information in each of the decision-making process steps. This approach requiring thinking modification will lengthen the process, make it more complex, and to some more arduous, but the comprehensiveness of the new thinking approach should lead to improved and more effective decision making. In this book, Dr. Martin presents a thinking modification framework that asserts that in the decision-making process, there are three situational states — a current state, future state, and a transitional state that one must deliberate in finding a solution. For each of these situational states, Martin develops an identical five-step process to determine the best decision to make. The steps of this process include: • Change-Needing Situational Analysis • Challenge Framing & Causal Analysis • Generating Solution Ideas • Choosing a Solution Set • Implementation and Aftermath Planning This book will appeal to decision makers, leaders, and students of management who want a specific framework that details the process behind making strategic, well-informed decisions.

Smart Choices

2015-08
Smart Choices

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  • Author: John S. Hammond
  • Publisher: Harvard Business School Press
  • ISBN: 9781633691049
  • Category :
  • Languages : en
  • Pages : 256

Where should I live? Is it time to get a new job? Which job candidate should I hire? What business strategy should I pursue? We spend the majority of our lives making decisions, both big and small. Yet, even though our success is largely determined by the choices that we make, very few of us are equipped with useful decision-making skills. Because of this, we often approach our choices tentatively, or even fearfully, and avoid giving them the time and thought required to put our best foot forward. In Smart Choices, John Hammond, Ralph Keeney, and Howard Raiffa--experts with over 100 years of experience resolving complex decision problems--offer a proven, straightforward, and flexible roadmap for making better and more impactful decisions, and offer the tools to achieve your goals in every aspect of your life. Their step-by-step, divide-and conquer approach will teach you how to: * Evaluate your plans * Break your potential decision into its key elements * Identify the key drivers that are most relevant to your goals * Apply systematic thinking * Use the right information to make the smartest choice Smart Choices doesn’t tell you what to decide; it tells you how. As you routinely use the process, you’ll become more confident in your ability to make decisions at work and at home. And, more importantly, by applying its time-tested methods, you’ll make better decisions going forward. Be proactive. Don’t wait until a decision is forced on you--or made for you. Seek out decisions that advance your long-term goals, values, and beliefs. Take charge of your life by making Smart Choices a lifetime habit.

HBR's 10 Must Reads on Making Smart Decisions (with featured article "Before You Make That Big Decision..." by Daniel Kahneman, Dan Lovallo, and Olivier Sibony)

2013-03-05
HBR's 10 Must Reads on Making Smart Decisions (with featured article

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  • Author: Harvard Business Review
  • Publisher: Harvard Business Press
  • ISBN: 1422191435
  • Category : Business & Economics
  • Languages : en
  • Pages : 194

Learn why bad decisions happen to good managers—and how to make better ones. If you read nothing else on decision making, read these 10 articles. We’ve combed through hundreds of articles in the Harvard Business Review archive and selected the most important ones to help you and your organization make better choices and avoid common traps. Leading experts such as Ram Charan, Michael Mankins, and Thomas Davenport provide the insights and advice you need to: Make bold decisions that challenge the status quo Support your decisions with diverse data Evaluate risks and benefits with equal rigor Check for faulty cause-and-effect reasoning Test your decisions with experiments Foster and address constructive criticism Defeat indecisiveness with clear accountability

Give Yourself a Nudge

2020-04-23
Give Yourself a Nudge

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  • Author: Ralph L. Keeney
  • Publisher: Cambridge University Press
  • ISBN: 1108803989
  • Category : Psychology
  • Languages : en
  • Pages : 279

The best way to improve your quality of life is through the decisions you make. This book teaches several fundamental decision-making skills, provides numerous applications and examples, and ultimately nudges you toward smarter decisions. These nudges frame more desirable decisions for you to face by identifying the objectives for your decisions and generating superior alternatives to those initially considered. All of the nudges are based on psychology and behavioral economics research and are accessible to all readers. The new concept of a decision opportunity is introduced, which involves creating a decision that you desire to face. Solving a decision opportunity improves your life, whereas resolving a decision problem only restores the quality of your life to that before the decision problem occurred. We all can improve our decision-making and reap the better quality of life that results. This book shows you how.

Thinking in Bets

2019-05-07
Thinking in Bets

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  • Author: Annie Duke
  • Publisher: Penguin
  • ISBN: 0735216371
  • Category : Business & Economics
  • Languages : en
  • Pages : 289

A Wall Street Journal bestseller, now in paperback. Poker champion turned decision strategist Annie Duke teaches you how to get comfortable with uncertainty and make better decisions. Even the best decision doesn't yield the best outcome every time. There's always an element of luck that you can't control, and there's always information hidden from view. So the key to long-term success (and avoiding worrying yourself to death) is to think in bets: How sure am I? What are the possible ways things could turn out? What decision has the highest odds of success? Did I land in the unlucky 10% on the strategy that works 90% of the time? Or is my success attributable to dumb luck rather than great decision making? Annie Duke, a former World Series of Poker champion turned consultant, draws on examples from business, sports, politics, and (of course) poker to share tools anyone can use to embrace uncertainty and make better decisions. For most people, it's difficult to say "I'm not sure" in a world that values and, even, rewards the appearance of certainty. But professional poker players are comfortable with the fact that great decisions don't always lead to great outcomes, and bad decisions don't always lead to bad outcomes. By shifting your thinking from a need for certainty to a goal of accurately assessing what you know and what you don't, you'll be less vulnerable to reactive emotions, knee-jerk biases, and destructive habits in your decision making. You'll become more confident, calm, compassionate, and successful in the long run.

Sources of Power

1999-02-18
Sources of Power

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  • Author: Gary A. Klein
  • Publisher: MIT Press
  • ISBN: 0262260867
  • Category : Business & Economics
  • Languages : en
  • Pages : 372

Anyone who watches the television news has seen images of firefighters rescuing people from burning buildings and paramedics treating bombing victims. How do these individuals make the split-second decisions that save lives? Most studies of decision making, based on artificial tasks assigned in laboratory settings, view people as biased and unskilled. Gary Klein is one of the developers of the naturalistic decision making approach, which views people as inherently skilled and experienced. It documents human strengths and capabilities that so far have been downplayed or ignored. Since 1985, Klein has conducted fieldwork to find out how people tackle challenges in difficult, nonroutine situations. Sources of Power is based on observations of humans acting under such real-life constraints as time pressure, high stakes, personal responsibility, and shifting conditions. The professionals studied include firefighters, critical care nurses, pilots, nuclear power plant operators, battle planners, and chess masters. Each chapter builds on key incidents and examples to make the description of the methodology and phenomena more vivid. In addition to providing information that can be used by professionals in management, psychology, engineering, and other fields, the book presents an overview of the research approach of naturalistic decision making and expands our knowledge of the strengths people bring to difficult tasks.

The Truth About Making Complex Or Critical Decisions

2008
The Truth About Making Complex Or Critical Decisions

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  • Author: Robert E. Gunther
  • Publisher:
  • ISBN: 9780137001538
  • Category : Career development
  • Languages : en
  • Pages : 35

Praise for The Truth About Making Smart Decisions " The Truth About Making Smart Decisions offers a truly valuable and entertaining journey through the complex terrain of decision making. Robert Gunther combines a writer's gift of the pen with a keen understanding of human nature, drawing upon his own experiences, business anecdotes, and vignettes from other walks of life. His selection of traps, insights, and truths are edifying as well as amusing, and many readers will recognize themselves as he exposes our weaknesses, and occasional brilliance, as we carve the trajectory of our life one decision after the next." Paul J.H. Schoemaker, Ph. D., coauthor of Decision Traps and Winning Decisions "Robert Gunther crystallizes years of expertise and insight in business writing into a book on probably life's most important matter: decision making. How do you do it and how do you do it much better? He offers many tools to organize the mind and maximize your ability to be a leader and money maker." Rick Rickertsen, Managing Partner of Pine Creek Partners and author of The Buyout Book and Sell Your Business Your Way "We make decision errors predictably, and Robert Gunther offers fifty ways of taking decisions more intelligently. The Truth About Making Smart Decisions is a concise and actionable guide for what to consider when facing critical choice points." Michael Useem, Ph. D., Wharton Professor of Management and author of The Go Point: When It's Time to Decide "If you think decision making is cut and dried, this book will make you think again. In The Truth About Making Smart Decisions, Robert Gunther offers challenging insights on how factors from sleep to intuition to emotions to mental models affect the quality of our decisions. He urges readers to take a broader view and raises issues that anyone should consider in making smarter decisions." Yoram (Jerry) Wind, Ph. D., The Lauder Professor and Wharton Professor of Marketing, and coauthor of The Power of Impossible Thinking Everything you need to know to make smarter, better decisions-in business and in life! - The truth about learning from your mistakes and those of others - The truth about how sleep can help you make better decisions - The truth about the power of acting decisively This book brings together 50 powerful "truths" about making better decisions: real solutions for the tough challenges faced by every decision-maker, in business and in life. You'll discover how to systematically ...

The Truth About Better Decision-Making (Collection)

2013-06-25
The Truth About Better Decision-Making (Collection)

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  • Author: Robert E. Gunther
  • Publisher: FT Press
  • ISBN: 0133445755
  • Category : Business & Economics
  • Languages : en
  • Pages : 905

A brand new collection of state-of-the-art tools for making better business decisions… 4 authoritative books bring together hundreds of bite-size, easy-to-use techniques for optimizing every business decision, choice, interaction, and negotiation! Your decisions drive your business performance and determine your career success. Whether you’re collaborating, leading, negotiating, or persuading, those decisions must be consistently sharp – and this 4 book collection will help you sharpen every decision you make. Start with Robert Gunther’s The Truth About Making Smart Decisions: 50 powerful bite-size “truths” about making better real-world decisions when it matters most. Gunther shows how to systematically prepare to make better decisions... get the right information, without getting buried in useless data... minimize risks and then act decisively... handle emotions... make better group decisions... profit from mistakes... and much more. Next, William S. Kane focuses on the decision to change – and to lead change. In The Truth About Thriving in Change, Kane shares 49 powerful decision-making “truths” about change leadership: which skills you need most, and how to develop them... how to lead change without eroding commitment or productivity... why you must start fast, and “run before you walk”... when to persuade, when to educate, and when to “use force”... how to create the right cultural framework for successful change, and more. Next, Leigh Thompson’s The Truth About Negotiations helps you optimize every decision associated with successful negotiations. Thompson provides realistic game plans that work in any scenario, showing how to create win-win deals by leveraging carefully collected information. Learn how to prepare quickly and efficiently… handle imperfect negotiating situations… establish trust with someone you don’t yet trust… recognize when to walk away. Thompson guides through planning strategy, identifying your “best alternative to a negotiated agreement,” making the right first offer to control the process, resolving difficult disputes, and achieving the goals that matter most. Finally, in The Truth About Getting the Best From People, Second Edition, Martha Finney turns to day-to-day management decision-making, offering 60+ powerful techniques -- including new ways to persuade, manage virtual teams, overcome unconscious decision-making biases, and identify/cultivate high performers. These four books offer definitive, evidence-based principles for optimizing your decision-making throughout your entire management career! From world-renowned decision-making experts Robert E. Gunther, William S. Kane, Leigh Thompson, and Martha I. Finney

The Great Mental Models, Volume 1

2024-10-15
The Great Mental Models, Volume 1

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  • Author: Shane Parrish
  • Publisher: Penguin
  • ISBN: 0593719972
  • Category : Business & Economics
  • Languages : en
  • Pages : 0

Discover the essential thinking tools you’ve been missing with The Great Mental Models series by Shane Parrish, New York Times bestselling author and the mind behind the acclaimed Farnam Street blog and “The Knowledge Project” podcast. This first book in the series is your guide to learning the crucial thinking tools nobody ever taught you. Time and time again, great thinkers such as Charlie Munger and Warren Buffett have credited their success to mental models–representations of how something works that can scale onto other fields. Mastering a small number of mental models enables you to rapidly grasp new information, identify patterns others miss, and avoid the common mistakes that hold people back. The Great Mental Models: Volume 1, General Thinking Concepts shows you how making a few tiny changes in the way you think can deliver big results. Drawing on examples from history, business, art, and science, this book details nine of the most versatile, all-purpose mental models you can use right away to improve your decision making and productivity. This book will teach you how to: Avoid blind spots when looking at problems. Find non-obvious solutions. Anticipate and achieve desired outcomes. Play to your strengths, avoid your weaknesses, … and more. The Great Mental Models series demystifies once elusive concepts and illuminates rich knowledge that traditional education overlooks. This series is the most comprehensive and accessible guide on using mental models to better understand our world, solve problems, and gain an advantage.