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Drucker: The Effective Decision

The effective decision
– synopsis of an article by Peter F. Drucker.

This is definitely worth re-publishing …. a classic  read.

NOTE: best practice process and tools available here

Best Practice Decision Making

While browsing through the B School library the other day, I happened across an article on decision making by Peter Drucker, originally written in 1967. Naturally as this is our business I was curious to see what one of the true masters of management had to say on the topic. Here is the synopsis together with our commentary.

Drucker commences by stating that an effective decision making process must go through some basic steps. These steps will not “make” the decision – it will always be a judgement call – but if the steps are ignored, the decision is not likely to be effective nor right. The 6 steps he recommends are: Continue reading “Drucker: The Effective Decision”

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HBR classic readings on strategy – supporting your strategic decisions

Key strategy readings – strategic decisions, business models, 5 forces, ….

Maybe you are a CIO trying to get to grips with strategy and how you should be influencing your own organisation’s strategic thinking. Perhaps you are a young, ambitious engineer with their first general management role. Possibly you are a CEO facing challenging times who needs to take time out to seriously reflect about the direction of their business. Or you could even be a seasoned strategy consultant who wants to recall the basics (and that is not a bad idea in this age of fast change and complexity).

Whatever category you fit into, skim through these Harvard Business Review Classics and stimulate your thinking about your business. Each article has a summary of the concept, the article itself and some suggested further reading. Below the image of the contents is a click-able link that takes you to a pdf with the set of articles. (Note clicking on the contents themselves only gives you a larger picture of the image).

The HBR Strategy Classics

 

At the moment, we at Genesis are finding ourselves in a number of conversations about business models – are they still valid? do we need to tweak our model? are we becoming outdated? can we use new tools and technologies to reinvent ourselves?

We would be delighted to have a conversation with you about your organisation and help you to DECIDE if, and how, you should be reviewing your business model – by using our own set of tools together with our expert Associates from a range of industries and disciplines.

Drop me a line at sgifford@genesis-esp.com and lets start a dialogue.

 

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Sleeping on your decisions

Sleeping on your decisions

An interesting blog was written by Maarten Bos and Amy Cuddy in the HBR Blog based on the story that Barack Obama decided to have a nights sleep before making the decision to authorise the raid that killed Bin laden.businesswoman sleeping Their research shows that when considering a problem, it is often useful to have the mind “distracted” for a while and the subconscious then undertakes an active process that accurately weights the pros and cons of the decision to be taken.

This aligns with other thinking (including that of Genesis) on the topic. We believe in highly Labyrinthcomplex situations, although the left brain may be useful in structuring a logical process and perhaps “running the numbers”, it is the right brain that is better at grasping the holistic picture and dealing with the complexity. A good process is to immerse yourself (or your team) in the details and context of the decision (eg in the Genesis decision room mentioned in “The Second Habit”) – and then take a break! Allow your right brain to take over and the only way to do this is to get your left brain to “shut-up”. So be it having a sleep, going for a run or, as Dan Pink describes in his book “A whole new mind”, go for a walk in a labyrinth and let your left brain worry about where it is walking and free your right brain to be creative and develop solutions.

Read the article at:

“A counter-intuitive approach to making complex decisions”

Talk to us at Genesis Management Consulting to see how we can help your team “improve lives through better decisions!”