Clear Thinking: Turning Ordinary Moments into Extraordinary Results
by Shane Parrish
“If you’re a knowledge worker, you produce decisions. That’s your job.” This book is about how to make better decisions. Here are some highlights.
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Decisionscape: How Thinking Like an Artist Can Improve Our Decision-Making
by Elspeth Kirkman
“Knowingly or not, we often draw on the logic of pictorial space as a metaphor for our decisions. We use phrases like getting things in perspective or blowing them out of proportion… And we implore one another to zoom out or see the big picture.”
Elspeth Kirkman is a behavioral scientist who uses the analogy of art making to explain the psychology of decision making. “I call this mental representation the decisionscape… The central idea of this book is that we could improve our decisions, whether personal or professional, by constructing and analyzing it deliberately, just as an artist approaches the canvas.”
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Why Can’t You Just Give Me the Number? An Executive’s Guide to Using Probabilistic Thinking to Manage Risk and Make Better Decisions
by Patrick Leach
Decisions can be based on a deterministic calculation only in conditions of certainty, that is to say the input parameters are known quantities. But strategic decisions are often made in a context of uncertainty and complexity, where a definite answer is unknowable, so we must turn to probabilistic thinking.
Uncertainty. “I make the case that all value generated by business executives comes—directly or indirectly—from how they manage uncertainty. Without uncertainty, a share of a company’s stock is effectively a bond, with guaranteed future cash flows. Guaranteed bonds don’t need management. But stocks (or rather, companies issuing stock) certainly do.”
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The Decision Makeover: An Intentional Approach to Living the Life You Want
by Mike Whitaker
The Decision Makeover is about replacing haphazard decision making with a mindful approach based on advancing our priorities. “Trial and error does not focus upon why each of our options makes sense in the big picture. The question should be: Does this choice best support my personal definition of success? … It takes discipline to ignore the noise and focus on only a few key goals. When we focus, things get done.”
Whitaker says that that we gain success momentum from a series of interdependent decisions. He describes the success formula waterfall: awareness, prime goals, decisions, dividends, momentum, success. “Good decision making allows you to pick up speed and make faster progress.”
Each year we make thousands of minor decisions, dozens of medium decisions, and perhaps one big decision. “Medium decisions are best illustrated as ‘course corrections’—like a boat captain. Since the boat’s destination is one of our big decisions… These medium decisions assure progress toward our success.”
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Six Thinking Hats
by Edward de Bono, M.D.
The Six Thinking Hats offers “an alternative to the argument system, which was never intended to be constructive or creative.” The emphasis is on “how we design a way forward—not on who is right and who is wrong.”
A major benefit is time savings. De Bono claims that ABB reduced their multinational project team discussions from 21 days to two days using the Six Hats method. “In the United States, managers spend nearly 40 percent of their time in meetings… Instead of rambling, ego-driven meetings, meetings are now constructive, productive, and much faster.”
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The Key Point 