Over the years I have worked with or consulted for many managers throughout the world at all levels of industry and government. I have seen who succeeded, achieved goals, and made progress, and who failed or crashed. I have studied their methods of operation and their decision-making approach, as well as the range of people involved in the decision-making. I similarly personally managed large industrial and service organizations and their operations, and found that to succeed and have a content team of collaborators, decision-making had to be joint and delegated to the lowest competent and informed level. Using this approach not only improved the performance of the organization or firm, but also resulted in a more content, professional, cooperative, happy, and competent workforce. In general, people like to assume responsibility, particularly of functions with which they are intimately familiar. They enjoy the role of de- sion-maker and the use of their knowledge and experience in guiding their and related work. Delegation of decision-making not only infuses pride and conte- ment but also assures more informed, timely, and effective implementation of de- sions. It also adds to worker training and education as workers inquire, develop information and use of their own experience in improving their decision-making. Worker pride and feeling of control and involvement lead to contentment and s- isfaction which, in return, pays dividends in worker productivity, morale, retention, and resulting low turnover.
The aim of this book is to quickly empower you to make better decisions by giving you step-by-step explanations of the best techniques. We always make decisions under uncertainty and pressure, especially in business. We need faster and better decisions to cope, but we don''t have the time to learn how to make them well. That is where I come in. I wrote this book to allow you to make better decisions without spending weeks studying theory and practice. THE INTRODUCTION gives you a snapshot of two decision-making biases, of the worst mistake you can do when making decision, and a lesson taken straight from philosophy. - Decision Biases (why your brain isn''t always your friend in decisions) - The Worst Mistake in Decision-Making - A Lesson From Another Time THE FIRST CHAPTER looks at frameworks of reference, meaning how you can apply decision-making to achieve your goals, for example how and why some decisions are able to automatically give you a competitive advantage. - The OODA Loop - The Recognition-Primed Decision Model - GROW or the John Whitmore Model - The PDSA Cycle CHAPTERS 2 TO 5 look at separate phases of decision-making: understanding your context, understanding the problem, generating solutions and selecting one option out of many. 2 - CONTEXT Contexts can be very different - and there is no one size fits all approach, which is why this book provides you with five. - SWOT and PEST - TELOS - Porter''s Five Forces - Causal Loops Diagrams 3 - PROBLEM ASSESSMENT Before making decisions, then, you need to work on finding out exactly what you are trying to solve. This chapter gives you 5 tools to do so: - Root Cause Analysis: Ishikawa''s Diagramand the 5 Whys Technique - Pareto Analysis - Kipling Method (5W1H) - CATWOE 4 - GENERATING IDEAS In "pure" decision-making, little attention is given to this phase, as it belongs to a different field: creativity. This book includes two tools: - Zwicky''s Box - SCAMPER 5 - WEIGHING ALTERNATIVES This book gives you six tools for this, each one with its specificities: - Weights and Factors: the Grid Analysis and the KT Matrix - The Paired Comparison Analysis - The Quantitative Strategic Planning Matrix - The Analytic Hierarchy Process - The Eisenhower Matrix CHAPTER 6 AND 7 look at group decisions, meaning whether it''s a good idea to make decisions in a group and, if it is, how that group should make decisions. 6 - DO YOU NEED YOUR TEAM? You can either involve your team in decisions or exclude them. Often, managers are torn between these two options - you have three tools to help you though: - The Vroom-Yetton-Jago Model - The Hoy-Tarter Model - The Hersey-Blanchard Model 7 - GROUP TECHNIQUES To be used when making decisions in a group is necessary. - The Nominal Group Technique - The Delphi Method - Hartnett''s Consensus-Oriented Decision-Making Model - The Stepladder Technique - DeBono''s Six Thinking Hats - The Charette Procedure - RAPID CHAPTERS 8 AND 9 look at decisions in corporate strategy and analyse a decision''s consequence 8 - CORPORATE STRATEGY These decision tools have all been developed for corporations, but they still hold value for smaller businesses. - The BCG Matrix - The Advantage Matrix - The GE Matrix - Blind Spot Analysis 9 - CONSEQUENCES In other words: "how can I make sure that the decision I made is the best one and will work in my specific situation?" Unfortunately nobody can answer this. Any decision method can only skew the odds of having made the right decision in your favour. That said, there are a few techniques you can apply. - Impact Assessment - Plus-Minus-Interesting - Decision Trees - Cost-Benefit Analysis - Futures Wheel
Every day, millions of employees watch their leaders sabotage themselves. They watch, they learn, and then they do it, too. Next thing you know, everyone’s lost motivation, and nobody takes ownership. That’s how organizations fail. This book will help you break the vicious cycle of self-handicapping leadership in your organization, stop the excuses, and unleash all the performance your team is capable of delivering. Phil and Jordan reveal how and why people handicap themselves even when they know better. Next, they offer real solutions from their own pioneering research and consulting. You’ll find practical ways to strengthen accountability and self-awareness, recognize the “big picture,” improve decision-making, deepen trust and engagement, develop talent, escape micromanagement, and focus relentlessly on outcomes. Your colleagues can be far more effective, and so can you. In fact, it starts with you–right here, right now, with this book. Many leaders inadvertently create cultures of failure. They model and promote “selfhandicapping” actions, where people withdraw effort or create new problems, in order to maintain their own self-images of competence. Self-Handicapping Leadership shines the spotlight on this widespread and destructive phenomenon and presents real action plans for overcoming it.
Black & white print. Principles of Management is designed to meet the scope and sequence requirements of the introductory course on management. This is a traditional approach to management using the leading, planning, organizing, and controlling approach. Management is a broad business discipline, and the Principles of Management course covers many management areas such as human resource management and strategic management, as well as behavioral areas such as motivation. No one individual can be an expert in all areas of management, so an additional benefit of this text is that specialists in a variety of areas have authored individual chapters.
Accessible and concise, this exciting new textbook examines data analytics from a managerial and organizational perspective and looks at how they can help managers become more effective decision-makers. The book successfully combines theory with practical application, featuring case studies, examples and a ‘critical incidents’ feature that make these topics engaging and relevant for students of business and management. The book features chapters on cutting-edge topics, including: • Big data • Analytics • Managing emerging technologies and decision-making • Managing the ethics, security, privacy and legal aspects of data-driven decision-making The book is accompanied by an Instructor’s Manual, PowerPoint slides and access to journal articles. Suitable for management students studying business analytics and decision-making at undergraduate, postgraduate and MBA levels.
Few managers devote enough attention to the thinking processes they should apply to their jobs. Yet long, energetic hours at work are wasted if business decisions are not logical, clear – and correct. Effective Decision Making is the definitive guide to the crucial managerial skill of creative thinking. In this classic book John Adair, Britain’s foremost expert on leadership training, tells you everything you need to know to enable you to analyse your own thought processes, think outside the box and know when to turn to others to help you make your decisions. Including advice on every aspect of the decision-making process, Effective Decision Making will help you to: • Approach problems efficiently and effectively – define objective, collect information, develop options, evaluate, decide and implement • Think in a more imaginative way • Know when to rely on your intuition • Feel more confident about arguing your case • Develop your thinking skills With examples of good and poor decision making, as well as exercises designed to help you maintain and improve your mental fitness, Effective Decision Making will enable you to master one of the most important skills needed to make you an effective leader.
Facilities now owned by the Federal Government are valued at over $300 billion. It also spends over $25 billion per year for acquisition, renovation, and upkeep. Despite the size of these sums, there is a growing litany of problems with federal facilities that continues to put a drain on the federal budget and compromise the effectiveness of federal services. To examine ways to address these problems, the sponsoring agencies of the Federal Facilities Council (FFC) asked the National Research Council (NRC) to develop guidelines for making improved decisions about investment in and renewal, maintenance, and replacement of federal facilities. This report provides the result of that assessment. It presents a review of both public and private practices used to support such decision making and identifies appropriate objectives, practices, and performance measures. The report presents a series of recommendations designed to assist federal agencies and departments improve management of and investment decision making for their facilities.
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.
The effectiveness of a good strategy well implemented determines a business' future success or failure. Yet history is full of strategic decisions, big and small, that were ill-conceived, poorly organized and consequently disastrous. This updated guide looks at the whole process of strategic decision-making, from vision, forecasting, and resource allocation, through to implementation and innovation. Strategy is about understanding where you are now, where you are heading and how you will get there. There is no room for timidity or confusion. Although the CEO and the board decide a company's overall direction, it is the managers at all levels of the organization who will determine how the vision can be transformed into action. In short, everyone is involved in strategy. But getting it right involves difficult choices: which customers to target, what products to offer, and the best way to keep costs low and service high. And constantly changing business conditions inevitably bring risks. Even after business strategy has been developed, a company must remain nimble and alert to change, and view strategy as an ongoing and evolving process. The message of this guide is simple: strategy matters, and getting it right is fundamental to business success.
