189 Posts Found

The value of most frameworks lies not in changing a manager’s initial intuition but in clarifying the issues that arise when managers with different instincts try to debate the right course of action. A structured framework can transform the debate from a battle of guts, ultimately resolved on the basis of reputation, power, and eloquence (often in that order), into a comparison of the assumptions … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Source: Harvard Business Review | Subjects: Decision Making, Strategy

People tend to overvalue advice when the problem they’re addressing is hard and to undervalue it when the problem is easy.

Another advice-related bias I’ve found compels people to overvalue advice that they pay for.

Content: Quotation | Source: Harvard Business Review | Subjects: Decision Making, Thought

Confronting doubt involves coming to terms with differences in values. How does one choose between two valued objectives: safety versus liberty, scientific discovery versus the sanctity of human life, individuals versus groups? Sometimes we overcome doubt with faith, sometimes we privilege one set of values over another. And sometimes we just live with the burden of making choices when there are no easy answers.

Content: Quotation | Source: Harvard Business Review | Subjects: Decision Making, Values

Facts and evidence are great levelers of hierarchy. Evidence-based practice changes power dynamics, replacing formal authority, reputation, and intuition with data. This means that senior leaders – often venerated for their wisdom and decisiveness – may lose some stature as their intuitions are replaced, at least at times, by judgments based on data available to virtually any educated person. The implication is that leaders need … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Sources: Evidence-Based Management, Harvard Business Review | Subjects: Decision Making, Organizational Behavior

Even in companies respected for their decisiveness, there can be ambiguity over who is accountable for which decisions. As a result, the entire decision-making process can stall, usually at one of four bottlenecks: global versus local, center versus business unit, function versus function, and inside versus outside partners.

…Cross-functional decisions too often result in ineffective compromise solutions, which frequently need to be revisited because the … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Sources: Harvard Business Review, Who Has the D? | Subject: Decision Making

Contrary to popular belief, your decisions don’t drive your long term success – your decisiveness does. Said another way, when you reach a crossroads on any issue, the act of choosing creates power, not the choice itself. The issue is momentum. No matter what you choose, when you commit boldly with conviction, you create momentum. When you hesitate you don’t. And success is built on … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Source: Fast Company | Subjects: Decision Making, Power / Authority

When it comes to innovation,business has much to learn from design. The philosophy in design shops is, ‘try it, prototype it, and improve it’. Designers learn by doing. The style of thinking in traditional firms is largely inductive – proving that something actually operates – and deductive – proving that something must be. Design shops add abductive reasoning to the fray – which involves suggesting … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Source: Rotman Magazine | Subjects: Decision Making, Innovation

We are given one life and the decision is ours whether to wait for circumstances to make up our mind or whether to act, and in acting, to live.

Content: Quotation | Source: LeaderValues | Subjects: Decision Making, Life

Merely having an open mind is nothing. The object of opening the mind, as of opening the mouth, is to shut it again on something solid.

Content: Quotation | Source: USTelecom dailyLead | Subjects: Decision Making, Thought

The final act of business judgment is of course intuitive. … But the big work behind business judgement is in finding and acknowledging the facts and circumstances concerning technology, the market, and the like in their continuously changing forms.

Content: Quotation | Source: Ivey Business Journal | Subjects: Decision Making, Thought

Decision…is an act of imagination, it is a choice amongst the products of imagination. …decision is wholly concerned with the future. Thus, decision cannot be choice of facts.

Content: Quotation | Source: LOK Conference | Subject: Decision Making

The capacity of human mind for formulating and solving complex problems is very small compared to the size of the problems whose solution is required for objectively rational behavior in the real world – even for a reasonable approximation to such objective rationality.

Content: Quotation | Author: Herbert Simon | Subjects: Decision Making, Economics

Isn’t stress the real test of personal and corporate values? The instant decisions executives make under pressure reveal the most about personal and corporate character.

Content: Quotation | Source: Ivey Business Journal | Subjects: Decision Making, Values

So much of what we hear and what we’re taught turns out to be false on closer scrutiny. Whether it is expert advice, what you read in the paper, or what your mother told you, if it is important, take the time to figure out for yourself whether it is really true.

Content: Quotation | Author: Steven D. Levitt | Sources: 800-CEO-READ (8CR), Business 2.0 | Subjects: Decision Making, Trends / Analysis

Business thinking starts with an intuitive choice of assumptions. Its progress as analysis is intertwined with intuition. The final choice is always intuitive. If that were not true, all problems of almost any kind would be solved by mathematicians with nonquantitative data.

The final choice in all business decision is, of course, intuitive. It must be. Otherwise it is not a decision, just a conclusion, a … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Source: Boston Consulting Group (BCG) | Subjects: Decision Making, Thought

Decisions are rich events. Your values get expressed through your decisions. Decisions communicate your priorities to everyone (including you!).

Content: Quotation | Source: Harvard Business School (HBS) Working Knowledge | Subject: Decision Making

Courage is the human virtue that counts most–courage to act on limited knowledge and insufficient evidence. That’s all any of us have.

Content: Quotation | Source: Zaadz | Subject: Decision Making

Our doubts are traitors, and make us lose the good we oft might win, by fearing to attempt.

Content: Quotation | Source: Zaadz | Subjects: Decision Making, Fear / Doubt

We haven’t done a good job of teaching critical thinking and creative problem-solving. People find critical thinking difficult because it’s a radical switch from their 20 years of education in solving well-structured problems. We’ve produced a nation of certainty junkies, where if you can’t define a problem with precision and certainty, people go crazy. Well, welcome to the real world. The game has changed. Problems … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Source: Across the Board (ATB) | Subjects: Decision Making, Thought

History shows that CEOs who dither over tough decisions cause companies to get stuck in adversity and, ultimately, to drift into crisis…The secret appears to be to “get on with it”: The game is won in the long term based on successful execution of a strategy, even a flawed one.

Content: Quotation | Source: strategy+business | Subjects: Decision Making, Leadership