Smart Decisions

Where should I live? Is it time to get a new job? Which job candidate should I hire? What business strategy should I pursue? We spend the majority of our lives making decisions, both big and small. Yet, even though our success is largely determined by the choices that we make, very few of us are equipped with useful decision-making skills. Because of this, we often approach our choices tentatively, or even fearfully, and avoid giving them the time and thought required to put our best foot forward. In Smart Choices, John Hammond, Ralph Keeney, and Howard Raiffa--experts with over 100 years of experience resolving complex decision problems--offer a proven, straightforward, and flexible roadmap for making better and more impactful decisions, and offer the tools to achieve your goals in every aspect of your life. Their step-by-step, divide-and conquer approach will teach you how to: * Evaluate your plans * Break your potential decision into its key elements * Identify the key drivers that are most relevant to your goals * Apply systematic thinking * Use the right information to make the smartest choice Smart Choices doesn’t tell you what to decide; it tells you how. As you routinely use the process, you’ll become more confident in your ability to make decisions at work and at home. And, more importantly, by applying its time-tested methods, you’ll make better decisions going forward. Be proactive. Don’t wait until a decision is forced on you--or made for you. Seek out decisions that advance your long-term goals, values, and beliefs. Take charge of your life by making Smart Choices a lifetime habit.

In plain langauge how to make optimal decisions in our everyday lives.

Today's world is complex and getting more so each day. Huge multinational corporations, international crisis and fast breaking events require most people to make decisions on a daily basis without the tools to understand the long term impact that today's decision might create. Because most people have never really been trained in how to make important complex decisions most people rely on experience, and 'gut reaction' which is okay for many decisions, but not okay for decision that will have meaningful impact on organizations and individual. Decision makers need to develop the art and science of strategic decision making. Here, Professor Thomas Martin explains the need for decision makers to modify their thinking about how they deal with acquiring and analyzing information in each of the decision-making process steps. This approach requiring thinking modification will lengthen the process, make it more complex, and to some more arduous, but the comprehensiveness of the new thinking approach should lead to improved and more effective decision making. In this book, Dr. Martin presents a thinking modification framework that asserts that in the decision-making process, there are three situational states — a current state, future state, and a transitional state that one must deliberate in finding a solution. For each of these situational states, Martin develops an identical five-step process to determine the best decision to make. The steps of this process include: • Change-Needing Situational Analysis • Challenge Framing & Causal Analysis • Generating Solution Ideas • Choosing a Solution Set • Implementation and Aftermath Planning This book will appeal to decision makers, leaders, and students of management who want a specific framework that details the process behind making strategic, well-informed decisions.

Learn why bad decisions happen to good managers—and how to make better ones. If you read nothing else on decision making, read these 10 articles. We’ve combed through hundreds of articles in the Harvard Business Review archive and selected the most important ones to help you and your organization make better choices and avoid common traps. Leading experts such as Ram Charan, Michael Mankins, and Thomas Davenport provide the insights and advice you need to: Make bold decisions that challenge the status quo Support your decisions with diverse data Evaluate risks and benefits with equal rigor Check for faulty cause-and-effect reasoning Test your decisions with experiments Foster and address constructive criticism Defeat indecisiveness with clear accountability

Discover the essential thinking tools you’ve been missing with The Great Mental Models series by Shane Parrish, New York Times bestselling author and the mind behind the acclaimed Farnam Street blog and “The Knowledge Project” podcast. This first book in the series is your guide to learning the crucial thinking tools nobody ever taught you. Time and time again, great thinkers such as Charlie Munger and Warren Buffett have credited their success to mental models–representations of how something works that can scale onto other fields. Mastering a small number of mental models enables you to rapidly grasp new information, identify patterns others miss, and avoid the common mistakes that hold people back. The Great Mental Models: Volume 1, General Thinking Concepts shows you how making a few tiny changes in the way you think can deliver big results. Drawing on examples from history, business, art, and science, this book details nine of the most versatile, all-purpose mental models you can use right away to improve your decision making and productivity. This book will teach you how to: Avoid blind spots when looking at problems. Find non-obvious solutions. Anticipate and achieve desired outcomes. Play to your strengths, avoid your weaknesses, … and more. The Great Mental Models series demystifies once elusive concepts and illuminates rich knowledge that traditional education overlooks. This series is the most comprehensive and accessible guide on using mental models to better understand our world, solve problems, and gain an advantage.

This is a laugh out loud, narrative-driven self-help book. Think Bridget Jones gets a critical makeover.In Why Smart Women Make Bad Decisions, our protagonist Kat is learning that the philosophy of &‘Believe-in-yourself-and Magic-will-happen' will not deliver her a better life. Her story, which recounts her hapless attempts to navigate scenarios disturbingly familiar to many readers, is presented with a companion account of the cognitive quirks that drive her faulty thinking and behaviour. This is neuroscience explained through the lens of a modern comedy; the buggy brain stripped bare in a laugh out loud take down of magical thinking and the goofy, delusional self-actualisation movement. Kat discovers that the simplistic advice to honour your intuition is not all it's cracked up to be. Despite practising Gratitude and Acceptance, she is still failing to lose the 5lbs that preoccupy her. Despite her Positive Thinking, her performance review leaves her limp with despair, and despite her assiduous application to making affirmations, her philandering Hipster Boyfriend leaves her (taking with him the remote control).In the companion explanation to each chapter, author Annie McCubbin explains to readers what drives people to behave in blindly optimistic and self-destructive ways. If only they could apply the critical thinking that our narrator suggests, smart women would indeed stop making bad decisions.It becomes clear to Kat, and in turn the reader, that positive thinking, meditation and magical thinking will not turn her life around. Instead, women should apply the narrator's advice and change the inherent cognitive flaws that run, and often ruin, their lives.

Enhancing your decision-making skills to make smarter decisions is the best way you can purposefully improve your life.

This is the eBook version of the printed book. If the print book includes a CD-ROM, this content is not included within the eBook version. We tend to be somewhat risk averse as a species. We are systematic and logical, which sometimes makes us overcautious. Sure, look a decision squarely in the face. Consider it from every angle, but also focus on the intangibles that might be harder to place into a systematic equation of risks and returns. After you've done a careful analysis, step back. Maybe the crazy decision is the right one. Don't underestimate the power of deciding boldly. These essential truths help you to learn the brave way to make complex and critical decisions.