185 Posts Found

The oldest, shortest words — “yes” and “no” — are those which require the most thought.

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

If you look closely at how people make decisions, a clear pattern emerges. No matter what the new strategy, initiative, or change program is, people have the same questions: How is this change relevant to what I do? What, specifically, should I do? How will I be measured, and what consequences will I face? What tools and support are available? What’s in it for me?

The … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Bill Jensen | Source: Fast Company | Subjects: Change Management, Decision Making, Leadership, Organizational Behavior

Analytics is the science of better decision-making; and decision-making is the heart of business.

Content: Quotation | Authors: Jim Guszcza, John Lucker | Source: Deloitte Review | Subjects: Decision Making, Trends / Analysis

You know how you can tell when you’ve made a good decision? If you feel like you waited too long to make it, then it’s a good decision.

Content: Quotation | Author: Jason Fried | Source: Inc. Magazine | Subject: Decision Making

Checking the results of a decision against its expectations shows executives what their strengths are, where they need to improve, and where they lack knowledge or information.

Content: Quotation | Author: Peter F. Drucker | Source: Babson Insight | Subject: Decision Making

Business proposals and decisions—big or small—have to provide satisfactory answers to this question: “Do we think this is true or do we know?”

Content: Quotation | Author: Kishore S. Swaminathan | Source: Outlook Journal (Accenture) | Subjects: Decision Making, Management

There are three very distinct ways that organizations can fall into the analysis-paralysis trap. One is a managerial tendency to “over-fit the curve”—a statistical term that refers to the diminishing value of additional data once a pattern (or curve, in the graphic sense) has been found. Data collection has a price, inaction has a price and an analytically literate organization will clearly understand the cost … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Kishore S. Swaminathan | Source: Outlook Journal (Accenture) | Subjects: Decision Making, Organizational Behavior, Trends / Analysis

Great empires are not built by people who see two sides to every question.

Content: Quotation | Author: David K. Hurst | Source: strategy+business | Subjects: Decision Making, Thought, Vision

Lucky risk takers use hindsight to reinforce their feeling that their gut is very wise. Hindsight also reinforces others’ trust in that individual’s gut. That’s one of the real dangers of leader selection in many organizations: leaders are selected for overconfidence. We associate leadership with decisiveness. That perception of leadership pushes people to make decisions fairly quickly, lest they be seen as dithering and indecisive. … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Daniel Kahneman | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subjects: Confidence, Decision Making, Leadership, Organizational Behavior

We work with many scientists, chemists, engineers, and accountants. By training, they are usually able to absorb, digest, and analyze large amounts of information. Their challenge is in making the leap from information to implication. Frequently, head-only leaders will struggle with the implications because wild swings in social, economic, and technological trends undermine logical, fact-based forecasts. Guts-only leaders will miss the boat because their … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Authors: David L. Dotlich, Peter C. Cairo, Stephen H. Rhinesmith | Source: The Conference Board Review | Subjects: Decision Making, Leadership

We naturally develop patterns of thought and behavior over time. These are a sort of survival technique, enabling us to deal with what life has taught us can be classified and dealt with by recourse to routine approaches. As a result, our reservoirs of intellectual energy are freed from being drained by repetitive solutions to the same problems, and are available to be alert to … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Jim Stroup | Source: The Conference Board Review | Subjects: Decision Making, Thought

Some employees make products, some make sales; the CEO makes decisions. Therefore, a CEO can most accurately be measured by the speed and quality of those decisions. Great decisions come from CEOs who display an elite combination of intelligence, logic, and courage.

Content: Quotation | Author: Ben Horowitz | Subjects: Decision Making, Management

When management waits until the data is clear, the game is over. But that means management has to take action on a theory rather than evidence. Unfortunately, the word theory gets a bum rap at the Harvard Business School and in business in general because it’s associated with the term theoretical, which connotes impractical. But actually theory is very practical. It says this will happen … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Clayton M. Christensen | Source: strategy+business | Subjects: Action, Decision Making, Management

If we consider what the work of attention is like, how continuously it goes on, and how imperceptibly it builds up structures of value round about us, we shall not be surprised that at crucial moments of choice most of the business of choosing is already past.

Content: Quotation | Author: Iris Murdoch | Source: Amazon.com | Subjects: Attention, Decision Making, Marketing / Sales

There is a tendency in our planning to confuse the unfamiliar with the improbable. The contingency we have not considered seriously looks strange; what looks strange is thought improbable; what is improbable need not be considered seriously.

Content: Quotation | Author: Thomas C. Schelling | Source: Pearl Harbor: Warning and Decision (Foreword) | Subjects: Decision Making, Planning, Risk Management, Strategy

A committee is a group of men who individually can do nothing, but as a group decide that nothing can be done.

Content: Quotation | Author: Fred Allen | Source: The Conference Board Review | Subjects: Bureaucracy, Decision Making

Decisions are made well only if based on a clash of conflicting views. The first rule of decision-making is that one does not make a decision unless there is disagreement. It safeguards the decision-maker against becoming a prisoner of the organization (or culture).

Content: Quotation | Author: Peter F. Drucker | Source: Ivey Business Journal | Subject: Decision Making

In the Information Age, information was a relatively scarce resource that conferred competitive advantages on those who obtained it. In the Knowledge Era, by contrast, information is virtually free. We often feel we’re drowning in the stuff. In theory, the true competitive advantage stems from turning all this information into useful knowledge. It’s a nice theory, as far as it goes. The truth, however, is … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Source: American Management Association (AMA) | Subjects: Decision Making, Information, Knowledge

An expert’s job is to be right — to solve the client’s problems through the application of technical and professional skill. The advisor behaves differently. Rather than being in the right, the advisor’s job is to be helpful, providing guidance, input, and counseling to the client’s own thought and decision-making processes. The client retains control and responsibility at all times; the advisor’s role is subordinate … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: David Maister | Source: Across the Board (ATB) | Subjects: Consulting / Analytical Tools, Decision Making, Expertise

Cost-benefit analysis can be an effective tool to analyze simple, one-dimensional problems, such as whether to install dividers on dangerous stretches of highway, where relatively unambiguous data is in abundant supply and there is little controversy. It also is a good way to elucidate the trade-offs for a given policy or regulation, or to produce a summary statistic about its economic efficiency.

But the cost-benefit method … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Denise Caruso | Source: strategy+business | Subjects: Decision Making, Risk Management, Trends / Analysis