Success as a manager boils down to your ability to make decisions. Wise decisions get you and your company ahead;poor choices stymie your career and damage your team's performance. Decision Making offers a time-tested, five-step methodology that can help you dramatically improve your decision-making skills and avoid common traps that lead to bad results. Managers will learn how to:

Employ proven decision-maKing tecnnlques

Get the right people involved

Reduce risk

Choose the best alternatives

Plus, readers can access free interactive tools on the Harvard Business Essentials companion Web site at:www.eledrning.hbsp.org/businesstools.

The Harvard Business Essentials series is designed to provide comprehensive advice, personal coaching, background information, and guidance on the most relevant topics in business. Drawing on rich content from Harvard Business School Publishing and other sources, these concise guides are carefully crafted to provide a highly practical resource for readers with all levels of experience and will prove especially valuable for the new manager.To assure quality and accuracy, each volume is closely reviewed by a specialized content adviser from a world-class business school. 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.

Introduction

1 The Decision Process

Five Key Steps

  Step 1: Establish a Context for Success

  Step 2: Frame the Issue Properly

  Step 3: Generate Mternatives

  Step 4: Evaluate the Alternatives

  Step 5: Choose the Best Alternative

  Summing Up

2 The Context for Success

Selling 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

3 The Framing Challenge

What Is the Real Problem?

  Perils and Promise

  Don't Impose Your Frame on Others

  Apply Creative Thinking

  Summing Up

4 Alternatives

The Source of Superior Solutions

  Generating Mternatives

  Brainstorming

  Bring a Creative Group to the Task

  Characteristics of Good Mternatives

  Summing Up

5 Evaluate the Alternatives

Finding the Falue 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

6 Make the Decision

Getting to Agreement

  Three Decision-Making Techniques

  Other Ways to Resolve Disagreements

    and Reach Closure

  Ending Deliberations

  After the Decision

  Summing Up

7 The Uncertainty Problem

How to Deal with Unknowns

  Step 1: Identify Areas of Uncertainty

  Step 2: Determine Which Uncertainties Could Have

    the Greatest Impact

  Step 3: Attempt to Reduce Key Uncertainties

   When to Trust Your Gut

   Summing Up

8 Human Foibles

 How to Counter Tendencies That Can Ambush Your Decision

   Anchoring and Adjustment

   Overconfidence

   Sunk Costs

   The Confirming-Evidence Bias

   False Analogies

   Summing Up

9 Organizational Traps

 The Madness-and the Wisdom-of Crowds

   Social Influences

   Groupthink

   RewaMing Optimists and Punishing Pessimists

   When Groups Make Better Decisions

   Summing Up

10 Toward a Smarter Organization

 Getting Better at Making Decisions

   The GM Experience

   Lessons for Organizational Improvement

   What Leaders Must Do

   Summing Up

 Appendix A: Useful Implementation Tools

 Appendix B: Financial Tools for Evaluating

   Alternatives

 Notes

 Glossary

 For Further Reading

 Index

 About the Subject Adviser

 About the Writer