Smart Things To Know About Decision Making

A long awaited second edition of the book which has sold tens of thousands in e-book format and helped business students and professionals all over the world make smarter decisions. Smart Things to Know About Decision Making takes a look at all types of decisions we must make, from the mundane to the insane. Smart decision-makers have the guts to size up a situation, look at the alternatives and decide. They alleviate the risk by using a process to come to the best decision. Smart Things to Know About Decision Making reveals a five step process to help make successful decisions: • Preparing to decide – Define the purpose and take a preliminary look at the financial case • Creating options – Never assume that there is only one possible way of solving a problem • Evaluating the options – Create the criteria that needs to be met and analyse the risks • Making the decision – Phew. That was the hard part • Implementing the decision – Your decision is not complete until you’ve created an action plan, recorded and re-evaluated your decision This new edition contains updated examples, links and content including pedagogical exercises to assist learning.

Decision trees or backing a hunch - smart advice on the art and science of decision making.

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.

Smart Leadership provides a completely up to date overview of thecurrent thinking on leadership. It outlines the latest theories andprinciples you need to apply to be a successful leader and includestips and wisdom from the greatest business thinkers andwriters. Smart books are essential primers to the key issues facing businesspeople. They are practical and action-oriented, providing instantknowledge for ambitious and hungry professionals who want to make alasting impression throughout their career. Smart books aredesigned to give killer approaches to key business subjects, anddeliver sound principles in a style that is both informative andhas attitude. They are the prefect resource for time-starved,information-hungry business people everywhere!

Smart Business is the definitive primer for understanding why companies behave as they do, what the basics of sound business practice are and where the stakeholders fit in. There are a handful of fairly simple but key drivers behind the way businesses operate and James Leibert explains them. Smart Business will enable readers to fast track their business skills. Smart books are essential primers to the key issues facing business people. They are practical and action-oriented, providing instant knowledge for ambitious and hungry professionals who want to make a lasting impression throughout their career. Smart books are designed to give killer approaches to key business subjects, and deliver sound principles in a style that is both informative and has attitude. They are the prefect resource for time-starved, information-hungry business people everywhere!

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.

How to stay in charge in a world populated by algorithms that beat us in chess, find us romantic partners, and tell us to “turn right in 500 yards.” Doomsday prophets of technology predict that robots will take over the world, leaving humans behind in the dust. Tech industry boosters think replacing people with software might make the world a better place—while tech industry critics warn darkly about surveillance capitalism. Despite their differing views of the future, they all agree: machines will soon do everything better than humans. In How to Stay Smart in a Smart World, Gerd Gigerenzer shows why that’s not true, and tells us how we can stay in charge in a world populated by algorithms. Machines powered by artificial intelligence are good at some things (playing chess), but not others (life-and-death decisions, or anything involving uncertainty). Gigerenzer explains why algorithms often fail at finding us romantic partners (love is not chess), why self-driving cars fall prey to the Russian Tank Fallacy, and how judges and police rely increasingly on nontransparent “black box” algorithms to predict whether a criminal defendant will reoffend or show up in court. He invokes Black Mirror, considers the privacy paradox (people want privacy, but give their data away), and explains that social media get us hooked by programming intermittent reinforcement in the form of the “like” button. We shouldn’t trust smart technology unconditionally, Gigerenzer tells us, but we shouldn’t fear it unthinkingly, either.