The Harvard Business Essentials" series is designed to provide 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. 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.
Harvard Business Essentials: Decision Making: 5 Steps to Better Results| Harvard Business Essentials (Author)| Harvard Business Review Press
Table Of Contents
Chapter 1. The Decision process
Five Key Steps: Establish a context for success, Frame the issue properly, Generate alternatives, Evaluate the alternatives, Choose the best alternatives, Summing up.
Chapter 2. The Context for Success
Setting the Stage: Get the right people to participate, Give some thought to the setting, Agree on how the decision will be made, From advocacy to dialogue, A hybrid approach, Summing up.
Chapter 3. The framing Challenge
What is the real problem? ; Perils and promise, Don’t impose your frame on others, Apply creative thinking, Summing up.
Chapter 4. Alternatives
The source of superior solution: Generating alternatives, Brainstorming, Bring a creative group to the task, characteristics of good alternatives, Summing up.
Chapter 5. Evaluate the Alternatives
Finding the value of each option: Variables to consider, Financial Analysis, The prioritization Matrix, The trade -off table, Decision trees, Computers to the rescue, The problem of uncertainty, Summing up.
Chapter 6. Make the Decision
Getting to Agreement: Three Decision making techniques, Other way to resolve disagreements and reach closure, Ending Deliberation, After the decision, Summing up.
Chapter 7. The Uncertainty Problem
How to deal with unknowns: Identify areas of Uncertainty, Determine which Uncertainty could have the greatest impact, Attempt to reduce key Uncertainties, When to trust your Gut, Summing up.
Chapter 8. Human Foibles
How to Counter Tendencies that can Ambush your Decision: Anchoring and adjustment, over confidence, Sunk costs, The confirming-Evidence Bias, False analogies, Summing up.
Chapter 9. Organizational Traps The Madness-and the wisdom-of Crowds: Social Influences, Groupthink, Rewarding optimists and Punishing pessimists When groups make better decision, Summing up.
Chapter 10. Toward a Smarter Organization
Getting Better at Making Batter Decisions: The GM experience, Lessons for organization improvement, What leaders must do, Summing Up.
Appendix A: Useful Implementation Tools
Appendix B: Financial Tools for evaluating alternatives
LINK FOR THE BOOK
