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Harvard Business Essentials
Decision Making: 5 Steps to Better Results
Decision making is a critical part of management, and bad choices can damage careers and the bottom line. This book offers the tools and advice managers need to avoid common biases and arrive at and implement decisions that are both sound and ethical.
The Harvard Business Essentials series provides comprehensive advice, personal coaching, background information, and guidance on the most relevant topics in business. Whether you are a new manager seeking to expand your skills or a seasoned professional looking to broaden your knowledge base, these solution-oriented books put reliable answers at your fingertips.
The Harvard Business Essentials series provides comprehensive advice, personal coaching, background information, and guidance on the most relevant topics in business. Whether you are a new manager seeking to expand your skills or a seasoned professional looking to broaden your knowledge base, these solution-oriented books put reliable answers at your fingertips.
192 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2006
10 people are currently reading
132 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
August 17, 2016
Dear Boring Ass Book,
I read you but I didn’t retain you. You were cold and impersonal and any like I might have had for you quickly withered and died. On second thought, there was a little piece of you that I did find mildly amusing and it does happen to tie in nicely with this review. You said extreme optimism is a bad thing when it comes to decision making (right on) and that you shouldn’t ignore the pessimistic side of things. Well this is pessimism hitting you with some truth! Be more of a people person and less of a clinical slab of crap.
Hatefully yours,
Me
I read you but I didn’t retain you. You were cold and impersonal and any like I might have had for you quickly withered and died. On second thought, there was a little piece of you that I did find mildly amusing and it does happen to tie in nicely with this review. You said extreme optimism is a bad thing when it comes to decision making (right on) and that you shouldn’t ignore the pessimistic side of things. Well this is pessimism hitting you with some truth! Be more of a people person and less of a clinical slab of crap.
Hatefully yours,
Me
October 16, 2021
.."
Like many other business activities, decision making is more effective, and its quality is more consistent when it is organized as a process. In the absence of a process, decisions may be ad hoc."
....
"Consider, for example, three people trying to ship packages from their local post office. One of the customers is a recent immigrant from one of the former Soviet Bloc states, another is the operations manager from a nearby manufacturing plant, and the third is an entrepreneur and founder of three successful companies. Although twenty people are in line at the moment, only two postal employees are available to help them. Everyone in the slow-moving line is frustrated with the pace of progress except one person: the immigrant. In fact, she is impressed by the service.“Back in the old country,” she tells the person behind the Framing Challenge 25 her, “there would have been only one person working at the counter, and he would take a break every half-hour, leaving everyone to stand in line. It’s so much better here.” The operations manager has a much different perspective.“This is a classic bottleneck,” he tells himself.“I’m sure that someone could re-engineer the entire process to make things move more quickly and at less cost.” Meanwhile, the entrepreneur is pleased by the experience of waiting in line because it has given him something of great potential value: an idea for a new business.“I wonder what people would pay for a no-waiting alternative to the post office—a postal shop with self-service kiosks?”His mind is already churning with ideas about using technology to cut waiting time and make a nice profit for him"
Like many other business activities, decision making is more effective, and its quality is more consistent when it is organized as a process. In the absence of a process, decisions may be ad hoc."
....
"Consider, for example, three people trying to ship packages from their local post office. One of the customers is a recent immigrant from one of the former Soviet Bloc states, another is the operations manager from a nearby manufacturing plant, and the third is an entrepreneur and founder of three successful companies. Although twenty people are in line at the moment, only two postal employees are available to help them. Everyone in the slow-moving line is frustrated with the pace of progress except one person: the immigrant. In fact, she is impressed by the service.“Back in the old country,” she tells the person behind the Framing Challenge 25 her, “there would have been only one person working at the counter, and he would take a break every half-hour, leaving everyone to stand in line. It’s so much better here.” The operations manager has a much different perspective.“This is a classic bottleneck,” he tells himself.“I’m sure that someone could re-engineer the entire process to make things move more quickly and at less cost.” Meanwhile, the entrepreneur is pleased by the experience of waiting in line because it has given him something of great potential value: an idea for a new business.“I wonder what people would pay for a no-waiting alternative to the post office—a postal shop with self-service kiosks?”His mind is already churning with ideas about using technology to cut waiting time and make a nice profit for him"
January 17, 2023
## The decision-making process
The objective of the decision
↓
Create a context for success
↓
Frame the issue properly
↓
Generate alternatives
↓
Evaluate alternatives
↓
Choose a better alternative
- People with authority to allocate resources and make a decision stick. there should be one or more people for this role
- Key stakeholders, because they are the people who are most affected by the decision
- Experts, from both inside and outside of the firm/the situation, because when you take more and more opinions from more than one area of expertise you get more options to choose from.
- Keep the size manageable because the more people the more choices try not to excide the size from 6-7 people
- Use task force as needed depending upon the complexity of the decision
- Give some thoughts to settings
The objective of the decision
↓
Create a context for success
↓
Frame the issue properly
↓
Generate alternatives
↓
Evaluate alternatives
↓
Choose a better alternative
- People with authority to allocate resources and make a decision stick. there should be one or more people for this role
- Key stakeholders, because they are the people who are most affected by the decision
- Experts, from both inside and outside of the firm/the situation, because when you take more and more opinions from more than one area of expertise you get more options to choose from.
- Keep the size manageable because the more people the more choices try not to excide the size from 6-7 people
- Use task force as needed depending upon the complexity of the decision
- Give some thoughts to settings
August 15, 2023
A quick read and a fine overview of a decision making process and guardrails to put in place in the decision making experience. However, it seems a bit outdated post pandemic and could stand a new addition with more current examples. Examples aside, the ideas are sound and supported with research as you would expect from HBR. If you're looking for a quick overview to spark some ideas on organizational procedure this is a good place to start.
August 3, 2020
Though not everything is applicable to everyday life as this is a business book, I found the idea and concepts transferable to the non-business world.
Read
April 23, 2012Grad school.
May 3, 2016
Très bien. Un livre relativement simple sur le processus derrière les décisions. Des étapes bien définies et bien documentées dans un format relativement simple à lire et à étudier.
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