Sunday, March 14, 2010

Book Review: How The Wise Decide

How the Wise Decide is authored by Byrn Z and Aaron S.

It is an interesting book as it profiles the good CEOs on how decision are made. Nevertheless, the book commit a common scientific error: the lack of control group.

Interesting points:

1) Go to the source. Check with the source of the raw information before making the decision.
- Make this approach routine.
- Cultivate long-lasting contacts with the sources
- Know which source is more important, and which source is less important

2) Meet people who tend to disagree or tend to state their independent stand.
- Get all people to say their viewpoint at least once.
- People may quarrel over their viewpoints. Do not allow people to carry any bad feelings beyond the meeting.
- Seek differing opinions. Different opinions help to light up the blind spots.
- Ask for formal commitment to the decision, if you think that the person is likely to disagree with the decision silently.

3) Do not be afraid of the risk behind the decision.
- Check thoroughly what is the risk.
- Reward people who have taken the intelligent risk.
- Experiment the risky idea (i.e. setting up a small scale operation to test the idea)
- Create a risk-tolerant culture.

4) Align the decision with the vision
- Create the correct vision

5) Listen with Purpose
- Ask the correct questions
- Question the assumptions
- Listen to the people who have to carry out the decision

6) Be Transparent
- Be consistent
- Over-emphasize the important decisions, so that people will place it on higher order and implement it.
- Do postmortems on the decisions taken.

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