Tuesday, September 2, 2008

How Can Decision Making Be Improved?

I recently published the second edition of my book "The Practice and Philosophy of Decision Making". Some of what I say in my book is based on a Negotiating Skills class I took from Prof. Max Bazerman when I was at Kellogg. So as I worked on the second edition, I was curious what he was up to and I found his HBR paper about decision making skills. In my book I talk about creating a personal framework to understand emotional biases - some a result of stone age "fight or flight" instincts that are inappropriate in today's society. The paper also talks about "how to reduce biased decision-making." From the summary page - key concepts include:
-People put great trust in their intuition. The past 50 years of decision-making research challenges that trust.
-A key task for psychologists is to identify how and in what decision-making situations people should try to move from intuitive, emotional thinking to more deliberative, logical thinking.
-The more that researchers understand the potentially harmful effects of some biased decision-making, the more important it is to have empirically tested strategies for reaching better decisions.

2 comments:

Chuck House said...

Neerja, this little book is profound. It merits wide circulation for its wisdom and its humane perspective about life, especially via introspection. While it is about decision-making, yes, it doesn't come directly at that question, which is a great deal of the charm in the writing.
Thank you for the chance to read it

Chuck House said...

Neerja, what a wise and profound book. It merits wide readership for its soft humane introspective presentation of the decision-making process and apparent dilemma on occasion. Thank you for the copy -- it was a pleasure and then some to read it