The Go Point: How to Get Off the Fence by Knowing What to Do and When to Do It

by Michael Useem

The Go Point—the moment of truth when you have to say “yes” or “no” when it’s time to get off the fence.

Michael Useem—through dramatic storytelling—shows how to master the art and science of being decisive. He places you smack in the middle of people facing their go point, where actions—or lack of them—determined the fates of individuals, companies, and countries.

• Why on earth did Robert E. Lee send General George Pickett on an almost suicidal charge against the Union lines at Gettysburg?

• How does the leader of a firefighting crew make life-or-death decisions, directing his people—with little information about weather patterns to guide him—to go up or down the mountain? One direction means safety, the other danger.

• You’ve just assumed responsibility for a scandal-wracked corporation, a company teetering on the brink of disaster. What you decide over the course of the next several days will have consequences for thousands of employees and investors. How do you fulfill your responsibilities?

Michael Useem makes you feel as if “you are there,” right in the center of the action. He was there: tramping up and down the mountain where firefighters made their momentous decisions; walking the battlefield at Gettysburg to see for himself just what General Pickett faced before making his ill-fated charge; going into a trading pit where million-dollar buy-and-sell decisions are made that affect fortunes of both the firm and the person making the call.

You’ll discover why some decisions were flawless, perfectly on target, andothers utterly disastrous. Most of all, you’ll learn how to make the right calls yourself, whether you’re changing your career, hiring an assistant, launching a product, or deciding on a potential acquisition or merger.

Smartly written and offering unusual insights into the minds of decision makers such as General Lee, The Go Point will provide the guidance for you to move with confidence when it’s your turn to get off the fence.

Also available as an eBook

From the Hardcover edition.

Genres: Nonfiction, Business, Leadership, Management

288 pages, Kindle Edition

First published October 3, 2006

About the author

Michael Useem is a professor in the Management Department and Faculty Director of the Center for Leadership and Change Management and McNulty Leadership Program at The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. His university teaching includes MBA and executive-MBA courses on management and leadership, and he offers programs on leadership and governance for managers in the United States, Asia, Europe, and Latin America.  He works on leadership development with many companies and organizations in the private, public and nonprofit sectors.

He is co-anchor for a weekly program “Leadership in Action” on SiriusXM Radio Channel 132 and co-director of the annual CEO Academy. He is the author of The Leader’s Checklist, The Strategic Leader’s Roadmap (with Harbir Singh), The Edge: How Ten CEOs Learned to Lead—And the Lessons for Us All, Go Long: Why Long-Term Thinking Is Your Best Short-Term Strategy (with Dennis Carey, Brian Dumaine, and Rodney Zemmel). Mastering Catastrophic Risk (with Howard Kunreuther), Fortune Makers: The Leaders Creating China’s Great Global Companies (with Harbir Singh, Neng Liang, and Peter Cappelli), The India Way (with Peter Cappelli, Harbir Singh, and Jitendra Singh), and Boards That Lead (with Ram Charan and Dennis Carey).

Reviews

[Alessandro · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent book

[Robert · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Go points" come in all shapes and sizes (as do "no go points") and some have serious implications, as in a crisis. Useem's primary objective in this book is to help his readers to prepare for such situations so that they will know what to do and how to do it. In this context, I am reminded of Sun Tzu's assertion in The Art of War that every battle is won or lost before it is fought. Useem cites all manner of examples to illustrate his key points and I was especially interested in his discussion of decision principles and tools involved in three immensely complicated and perilous situations: the death of forest fighters in Colorado, the Battle of Gettysburg, and the crash of a plane in the Andes in the early 1970s. Several valuable lessons can be learned from each. During the Andean ordeal, for example, Roberto Canessa was guided by five principles "that continue to inform his decision making more than three decades later": stay focused, set the bar high, get back to basics, no second-guessing, and stay cold and calculating to maximize your chances of success.

The template is one of many reader-friendly devices that Useem skillfully employs throughout this book. As he explains, "To be truly useful, a decision template should be generic enough to apply to many situations, yet specific enough to provide real guidance with real-life choices." Useem provides seven templates that enable each reader to "dig out the principles, good and bad, that emerge from tangible experience" to "begin to build [her or his] own decision templates." The five are for making decisions (Pages 180-181), preventing unforced errors (228-230), seeing ahead (142-143), touch choices (90-92), transcending personal profit (205-206), and using the net (1151-116). Useem suggests that each of these templates be viewed "as an open-source initiative, a collectively generated product."

[Becca Morello · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was ok. At many points it really struggled to keep my attention. In fact, I nearly made the "go point" decision to abandon this book midway. However, the information in here is valuable and worthy of attention, and also it was a recommendation from one of my mentors so I felt inclined to finish it. Although well researched and at times very interesting, "The Go Point" may be more engaging material to digest in a presentation or lecture rather than a book. If you're looking for reading material within this genre (motivation, decision making, business, etc) I would recommend skimming this one but invest your serious reading time in another book of this genre.

[Leader Summaries · Rating 5 out of 5]

Desde Leader Summaries recomendamos la lectura del libro El momento de la verdad, de Michael Useem.
Las personas interesadas en las siguientes temáticas lo encontrarán práctico y útil: habilidades directivas, analizar y tomar decisiones.
En el siguiente enlace tienes el resumen del libro El momento de la verdad, Principios y herramientas para una buena toma de decisiones: El momento de la verdad

[Eric Huang · Rating 4 out of 5]

A friend who was taught by Useem at Wharton recommended his writings to me. Useem uses various examples of leaders who had to make challenging decisions, and the principles held to by these leaders that led up to their decisions. The tables at the end of each chapter are meant to clarify to the reader the reasons/principles behind their decisions, but I think that could have been better organized. This is a minor point, but overall an interesting read.

[Venkatesh Bhat · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the must-books.

[Elsbeth Kwant · Rating 4 out of 5]

useful!