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Left Brain, Right Stuff
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Left Brain, Right Stuff

How Leaders Make Winning Decisions

Phil Rosenzweig
Public Affairs, 2014
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Editorial Rating

9

Qualities

  • Innovative
  • Applicable

Recommendation

Most social science research about decision making is not relevant to corporate strategic planning decisions, which are notably different from investment or purchase decisions. Phil Rosenzweig, a professor at IMD, a top Swiss business school, examines business decision making from the point of view of a strategist. He strikes a balance between two recommendations – make a careful “left brain” analysis and be sure you have the “right stuff” to move ahead boldly – as he explains what competitive decision making requires in context. getAbstract praises his innovative model for its broad spectrum of thought and guidance about the nuts and bolts of strategic decision making, and suggests it to decision makers at all levels.

Summary

Tough Choices

Executives who make business decisions with multiple factors in play and extensive consequences at stake face considerable challenges. Strategic planners must prioritize their choices in often-confusing circumstances. While people should avoid the biases in their thinking to make better decisions, complex corporate decision making requires more.

Social scientists conduct extensive research to discover why and how people make decisions. They examine the choices people make when they have no control or influence over the outcome of an event and no ability to alter the terms of the experiment. Researchers structure their testing this way so they can compare and evaluate the results.

Such orderly, controlled research has developed reliable, worthwhile data on how people make decisions. Psychologist and author Dan Ariely explains, “For social scientists, experiments are like microscopes or strobe lights, magnifying and illuminating the complex, multiple forces that simultaneously exert their influences on us.” This is useful in determining how and why consumers and investors make buying decisions.

Unanswered Questions

However, when it comes...

About the Author

Phil Rosenzweig, author of The Halo Effect, is a professor at the IMD business school in Lausanne, Switzerland and a former assistant professor at Harvard Business School.

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