Making Decisions: Putting the Human Back in the Machine

by Ed Smith

Winning takes many forms. For fans of Matthew Syed, this is a great sports book about leadership, judgement and decision-making – rooted in the theory that helped Ed Smith lead England cricket to sustained success. And to help us all win more.

‘An absolutely fascinating book’ THE GAME, The Times football podHow do you spot the opportunities that others miss?How do you turn a team’s performance around?How do you make good decisions amid a tidal wave of information? And how can you improve?As chief selector for the England cricket team, Ed Smith pioneered new methods for building successful teams and watched his decisions tested in real time on the pitch. During his three-year tenure, England averaged 7 wins in every 10 completed matches, better than they have performed before or since.

Making Decisions reveals Smith’s unique approach to finding success in a fast-changing and increasingly data-reliant world. The best decisions, Smith argues, rely on a combination of differing kinds of from algorithms to intuition. This is a truth that the most successful people data cannot account for everything, it must be harnessed with human insight. Whatever the power of data, humans aren’t finished yet.

Sharing for the first time the tools he introduced as England selector, Smith’s book captures the immediacy of life at the sharp end, while also exploring frameworks from the top levels of sports, business and the arts. Decision-making is revealed as a creative enterprise, not a reductive system.

Making Decisions offers an invaluable guide for those who want a better framework for developing, explaining and implementing new ideas.

Genres: Nonfiction, Sports

223 pages, Kindle Edition

Published September 15, 2022

About the author

Ed Smith is an author and journalist, and a former international cricketer who has represented England, Cambridge University, Kent and Middlesex. Ed Smith's previous books include Playing Hard Ball, On and Off the Field -- the Wisden Book of the Year and shortlisted for the William Hill Sports Book of the Year and The Cricket Society Book of the Year Award -- and the critically acclaimed, What Sport Tells Us About Life. After retiring from cricket Ed Smith became a leader writer for The Times. He lives in London.

Reviews

[Markus Eie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Artig lesning om hvordan ta gode beslutninger og avgjørelser ved valg og seleksjon. Kanskje en tanke for enkel og kort om slik et tema. Underholdende.

[Peter K · Rating 3 out of 5]

I did enjoy this book generally but it did feel more suited to a long form article rather than a complete book.

I'm not entirely sure whether it was aiming to be a book about the author's time as Chief Selector for the England Men's cricket team with a sprinkling of reflection on decision making theory and practice or, the other way round. Either way it fell a little short.

I would have been very interested to read more of the nuggety detail of Ed Smith's time as selector , the real details that would have bought to life situations that I as a fan only saw from the outside. Whilst there was some interesting insight into the selection process, I felt that he often withdrew just as we were getting to the key and interesting detail.

Equally there was some interesting insight into management and decision-making theory , the key quotes often being third party, but interesting nonetheless, but for me would have benefited from a longer reflection on each key point.

I think that timing was not the author's friend here as the summer of 2022 saw the England men's team appoint a new head coach in Brendon McCullum and a new captain in Ben Stokes with spectacular and mostly successful consequences. After a dreadful run of form that could only act as positive introduction for this book considering the author's previous employment this must have been somewhat awkward and could not be ignored - the coverage of this summer season felt a little rushed as no doubt it may have been.

An interesting book but ever so slightly disappointing for the reasons articulated above

[Martin Rogers · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some of the content is interesting, it's just a shame that the book comes across as Ed Smith writing about how brilliant he is. Liked some of the content, that's a 4. But the smug, pretentious author and his writing were 2 so I've averaged out at 3, which feels generous. Its like no one ever knew having a point of difference, especially a left arm seamer, was effective until the great Ed Smith discovered it. C'mon man.

Spoiler alert: Ed Smith thinks he is an innovative and contrarian thinker and is not afraid to say so, many times.

[Rob Mead · Rating 3 out of 5]

It’s half a study on decision making and half a defence of his England selection career. It doesn’t add up to a full whole

[Thomas · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was hoping that this would be more of an analysis of how to make better decisions, particularly in the ‘big data’ age. There was a bit of that, but most of this was a fairly superficial overview of Smith’s time as chief England selector. In parts this was interesting but it felt the book was trying to do two things: talk about decision making and recounting his time with England. This is probably grounds for two separate books rather than this in between piece of work, which made the end result a bit dissatisfying.

[S Ravishankar · Rating 5 out of 5]

A marvelous book and a delightful read.

Ed comments on decisions, and provides insights, that led to on-field performances of the England Cricket team from 2018 to 2021. Ed and James Taylor were the two selectors during this successful period for England. The book describes how much decision-making changed with increased data available; in the end the Author argues that human ingenuity and leadership alone can utilize this to advantage.

[John · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is a book on cricket first, and an exploration of data analytics as an afterthought

[George · Rating 2 out of 5]

- team comes first
- a great team more than the sum of its players
- (swarm) Complexity thinking/strategy, synergy, swarming
- lego

[Sam Booth · Rating 1 out of 5]

As someone who isn’t particularly a fan of cricket, this certainly impacted my thoughts on the book, however I was keen to read insights on how decision making in the sport was similar to or differing from areas of my own life.

The author seems to relish in their own omniscient instinct in decision making through stories from his glory days. Very early on in the book, it’s stated that this isn’t a book about cricket but about “making decisions”. However, you’d be hard pressed to find a chapter that doesn’t lean heavily on the sport with some clever quip or comment at the end that ties the tale (usually self-fellating the author’s own greatness) back to the theme of the book.

The most insightful part of the book were quotes pulled from greater thinkers and writers than the author. Wouldn’t recommend.