Make Up Your Mind E-Book

Hal Mooz

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Fachliteratur
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 165

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2012

Beschreibung

A proven decision-making system guides readers to the rightchoice every time Make Up Your Mind provides author Hal Mooz'sproprietary system for decision making. This approach consists ofthree decision-making models, including: the Decision Type Model,which characterizes what is at stake with any decision; theDecision Solution Model, which frames the most suitablealternatives; and the Decision Judgment Model, which provides tenbases for judging alternatives, some of which may be defensible andothers that, although popular, may not be defensible to challenge.These models guide the reader's thinking to the most promisingalternatives and the best choice. * A decision fit person enjoys the benefit of thinking clearlyabout decisions and their outcomes and is competent to actknowledgeably and decisively about creating the alternatives andjudging them appropriately. Become decision fit. Think clearly and act decisively on yourown decisions and help others to do the same.

Leseprobe

CONTENTS

Why this Book?

Foreword Jeff Henley

Background and Acknowledgments

Preface

Part I: Are you Decision Fit?

Chapter 1: Decision Environment

Introduction

Decisions Shape your Future

Chapter 2: Decision Fundamentals for Thinking Clearly

Decision Rigor is Driven by the Fear of a Negative Outcome

Intentions, Decisions, and Outcomes

Definition of a Good Decision

Decision Making and Sunk Costs

Decision Making and the Cost/Price of Indifference

Two Decision-Making Stages

The Impact of the Decision Outcome

Chapter 3: The Decision Type Frame

Crafting the Decision Statement

The Decision Context

The Power of Framing

The Decision Type Frame

Decisions and Delegated Authority

The Decision Type Frame

Assessing Decision Outcome Impact

The Decision Maker and the Decision Type Frame

Chapter 4: The Bases for Judgment

Decision Action

Instinct-Based Judgment

1. Indifference-Based Judgment

2. Addiction-Based Judgment

3. Faith-Based Judgment

4. Emotion-Based Judgment

5. Intuition-Based Judgment

Intuition Comes in Many Forms

6. Pressure-Based Judgment—Power/Peer/Perk

7. Doctrine-Based Judgment

8. Expert-Based Judgment

9. Fact-Based Judgment

10. Probability-Based Judgment

Which Judgment Process is Most Suitable?

Chapter 5: The Decision Solution Frame

The Decision Solution Frame Introduction

Decision Solution Frame Categories

Opportunities and Their Risks

The Impact of Uncertainty

Developing Alternatives and Related Information (Facts and Probabilities)

Part II: Deciding

Chapter 6: Process-Assisted Judgment

What Type of Decision is It?

Alternative Judgment Methods

Process-Based Judgments

Chapter 7: Fact-Based Judgment

Fact-Based Judgment, aka Low Uncertainty Judgments

Rank Sums Judgment Process

Dominance Analysis Judgment Process

Pugh’s Judgment Process

Kepner-Tregoe Derived Judgment Process (KT)

Value Curves

Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP)

Criteria Hierarchy

Fact-Based Decision Analysis Software

Chapter 8: Probability-Based Judgment

Decisions in Uncertainty

Predictable Probability Decisions

Decision Tree Analysis

Techniques for Reducing Uncertainties

Judgments of High Uncertainty

Chapter 9: Group Decision Making

Chapter 10: Summary

Bibliography

Index

Praise for Make Up Your Mind

“When you read a book that is so logical in the telling, you realize that this book is genius. It breaks down decision making into a very simple process that has helped me be a better consultant. I just use Hal’s little business card reminders about what decision making is all about. I keep the card on the dashboard of my car and I refer to it before I visit any client. With this book now available, I will be able to refer people to a book that has powerful strength in helping keep us all on track and focused. It has been a helpful guide for me and I am sure it will be for others.”

—Lenard Bertain, PhD, Business Consultant

“Business leaders need to understand the basis of their decisions and how to optimize them. This book provides an effective framework that is brought to life with interesting anecdotes.”

—Garry E. Menzel, PhD, Chief Operating Officer, Regulus Therapeutics

“Decision making, at all levels, is a major stumbling block for most companies to achieve their desired results of a transformation. Make Up Your Mind provides some incredibly practical ideas on how individuals and organizations can make better decisions. This book will help you to become a champion of fact-based, informed decision making in your life and in your organization.”

—Mark Holmstrom, Chief Innovation Officer and Partner, Infosys Consulting

“With his book, Make Up Your Mind, Hal Mooz provides tools to assist everyone—from a student, to a parent, to a politician, to a Chief Executive—on how to achieve consistently better outcomes by making better decisions. This is a book you will want to read several times over, and buy multiple copies as gifts for those you care about.”

—Thomas J. Powell, Chief Executive Officer, Resolute Capital Partners

“Hal’s book brings discipline and structure to the sometimes daunting problem of choosing among alternatives in both simple and complex situations. Make Up Your Mind should assist anyone who faces choices in their business life as well as in their private life. The book provides clear examples of both situations and shows how the use of the techniques can result in focusing on defensible choices.”

—WEM, Business Owner

“I have taught Decision Analysis for NASA and numerous aerospace and commercial organizations for over 20 years. I consider this book a valuable contribution to help organizations faced with technical decisions improve the processes they use and thus the decision outcomes that affect both business and mission success.”

—John R. Chiorini, PhD, Business Consultant

“If you’re lying awake at night, wondering how you’ll tackle a high-impact decision, MakeUp Your Mind provides a clear, concise approach. As has been noted before, common sense is rarely common knowledge. From deciding which projects to undertake, to managing the important decisions that occur throughout the project lifecycle, Hal provides a step-by-step technique to replace decision making that’s all too often governed by ‘gut feel’ or intuition. I will recommend this book to all of our clients.”

—Dan Swaigen, PMP, MCP, Chief Executive Officer, PM Connect, Inc.

“I’ve learned a lot while working with Hal Mooz over the years, such as how to listen, the real meaning of words and actions, and being proactively responsive to others. The challenge that has always been with me is what you are thinking, and now with his new book, the challenge is ever present! I think Hal brings it all home with Make Up Your Mind!”

—Herb Myers, Regional Business Banking, President, Wells Fargo & Co.

“We all want to make Good Decisions . . . yet often don’t! Mooz’s book Make Up Your Mind shows us how to do it better, and he highlights the many pitfalls we need to avoid along the way. He gives us a new way of thinking about this old process. A must-read for both home and business . . . and for both technical and nontechnical readers alike!”

—Kevin Forsberg, PhD, Expert Systems Engineering Professional and INCOSE Pioneer

“As a retired consulting economist, I am acutely aware of the uncertainties that surround forecasts and projections of economic and social behavior. I wish Make up Your Mind had been available to me, as I am sure it would have led me to more rigorously evaluate the uncertainties surrounding the bases for my recommendations and increase my clients’ confidence in their possible outcomes.”

—Robert T. Mott, Retired Consultant

“The great strength of this book lies not so much in its rigorous methodologies of decision making and analysis, but rather in the implied sense of ethics, integrity, and respect which the author champions for us. Even though his approach to decision making is ‘modern’ in its appeal to rigorous investigation, hard scientific evidence, and meticulous planning, it is actually very ‘old-fashioned’ in its commitment to the values of honor, responsibility, and personal integrity.”

—Jim Boyers, PhD, Clinical Psychologist

“Make Up Your Mind is about choosing a decision. Mr. Mooz presents a manner, style, and a sustainable method of choosing for all the citizens of all ages of our world to utilize. Everyone will benefit by reading, studying, and absorbing this book.”

—Charles A. Arnold, MD, Oncologist, Futures Pool Operator

“In this book, Hal Mooz has brought order to the process of decision making, more desperately needed here early in the twenty-first century than ever before in human history. The range of experience Mooz brings to the writing of a book about ways to make wise choices is extremely impressive as is the clarity and concreteness with which he sets forth the procedures he’s devised. As a professor of English who for half a century has carefully examined the critical thinking skills of thousands of college students, I can testify to the desperate need for a book of this nature.”

—Jack Miles, English Professor

ALSO BY HAL MOOZ

Visualizing Project Management: Models and Frameworks for Mastering Complex Systems, Third Edition (John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2005)

Communicating Project Management: The Integrated Vocabulary of Project Management and Systems Engineering (John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2003)

Copyright © 2012 by Hal Mooz. All rights reserved.

Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey.

Published simultaneously in Canada.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data:

Mooz, Hal.

Make up your mind : a decision-making guide to thinking clearly and choosing wisely / Hal Mooz.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-1-118-17271-1 (cloth); ISBN 978-1-118-22688-9 (ebk); ISBN 978-1-118-22973-6 (ebk); ISBN 978-1-118-22955-2 (ebk)

1. Decision making. 2. Thought and thinking. I. Title.

BF448.M66 2012

153.8’3—dc23

2011037182

A good decision can have good or bad outcome

A bad decision can have good or bad outcome

All decisions may be unknowingly permanently recorded

How then do we achieve the outcomes that we desire and are proud of?

WHY THIS BOOK?

This book is directed toward all segments of our population. It was created to help readers become skilled in thinking more clearly about their decisions and in applying appropriate judgments to make actionable choices. While the included models are helpful for decisions of low impact, they are most useful for decisions of significance that often cause anxiety, stress, and loss of sleep. The rational step-by-step methods for framing both the decision type and the potential solutions and in valuing the decision alternatives will usually lead to the best choice.

Businesspeople will find it helpful in leading their decision processes at work. Families will be able to arrive at better consensus-based conclusions. Inquisitive teenagers will benefit by making more informed decisions about their education, career, and lifestyle. Everyone can benefit by becoming decision fit. These principles can help meet that goal.

FOREWORD

Making good decisions is a crucial skill at every level.

—Peter Drucker1

Decision: de•ci•sion (n.)2

1. The passing of judgment on an issue under consideration.

2. The act of reaching a conclusion or making up one’s mind.

3. A conclusion or judgment reached or pronounced; a verdict.

We all make decisions every day and I suspect that most of us don’t consider the process we use to determine each decision. Decisions can be as routine as selecting something to wear or to eat, or as complicated as choosing a career or making a life-altering medical decision.

Decisions we make reflect much of who we are. Executives and managers expect their colleagues to know how to make well-founded and defensible decisions. We expect our government representatives to make logical decisions when acting on behalf of constituents. Our families expect us to make decisions in the best interest of the family. Parents struggle with teaching their children how to make sensible decisions that will affect their futures in a positive way. Yet in the face of these expectations and challenges, decision making is typically not taught without pursuing elective training in decision making.

What is a good decision and how do we learn to make better decisions? Ask a room full of people and you will get a variety of answers. Seasoned decision makers will agree that with experience we learn to make better choices, but along the way most of us would admit we learn from the “school of hard knocks.” When we make bad decisions we hope to learn from them and move on to make better decisions over time. However, in this age of digital permanence with YouTube, Facebook, and a myriad of other networks, the recording of our bad decisions can remain intact to haunt us for a very long time. This alone should encourage each of us to seek training to help make better decisions.

This book is a practical guide to thinking clearly about decisions and what is at stake with any decision. It identifies four aspects of serious decisions that are rarely consciously considered. Can the decision result in a very bad outcome? Will the outcome be permanent? Does the outcome result in a binding agreement with others? Will the judgment be based on certain or uncertain information?

Decision choices are based on our best judgment. However, we are rarely conscious of what our best judgment is based on. This book identifies and describes the 10 bases for passing judgment on decision alternatives, all of which are found in daily practice. Some bases are defensible and some are not, depending on the decision at hand. The author includes a powerful decision judgment model that can serve as a valuable reminder and should improve the basis of your future decision judgments.

While logic-based decisions are widely publicized in books and magazines, the author of Make Up Your Mind offers five proven processes, each adding increased precision, resulting in more sound and defensible outcomes.

Paradigm shifts occur when you no longer think and believe as you once did and you adopt a new view of an old standard. This book is sure to shift one or more paradigms about how you and others make decisions.

I trust you will believe as I do that this book is long overdue and will help future decision makers become decision fit.

—Jeff Henley

Chairman, Oracle Corporation

1Harvard Business Review, June 1, 2004.

2The Free Dictionary by Farlex.

BACKGROUND AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

In 2005, my company was selected to partner with Stanford University’s Professional Development Program in the creation and delivery of a certificate program in Systems Engineering. My background as a Lockheed Chief Systems Engineer and my experience in training thousands of systems engineers made this a logical fit. Our Stanford partner was Dr. Ron Howard, internationally recognized and often quoted as the expert on decision analysis. Since project management and systems engineering require skilled decision making this was a mutually reinforcing partnership. At the time I could not envision how my outlook on life and business practices would change.

The curriculum development required ongoing interactions for the sharing of ideas. While we were discussing with Dr. Howard the importance of baseline management to systems engineering, he was educating us on the details of making decisions based on difficult to quantify uncertainty. It was an environment of mutual discovery and learning.

Early in my systems engineering career I benefited from formal training in multiattribute fact-based decision making, which is considerably different from Dr. Howard’s major interest of decisions made based on uncertainty. In my development of space systems my objective was to reduce uncertainty to near zero through research and experimentation bolstered by robust designs that were fault tolerant to handle inevitable uncertainties. So while Dr. Howard’s excellent work was meaningful, in many instances it was not directly relevant to me based on my systems engineering experience.

Dr. Howard’s influence caused me to become decision aware. That is, I began to observe others, including those reported by the media, making many flawed decisions. Root cause analysis of these bad decisions revealed that there are many bases for decision judgment, some of which are good, and defensible, and others that—although popular—can lead to flawed and nondefensible outcomes. This triggered two actions on my part. I proceeded to read the available books on decision making and simultaneously I began noting the decision judgment bases that decision makers used. Concurrently I began incorporating decision making into my project management and systems engineering training to benefit from student feedback, which is always beneficial.

Several years of research into published work on decision making revealed that there was no consistent way of categorizing the type of decision being made (what is at stake) and there was no well accepted model of the many bases for making decision judgment. Both of these are provided in this book.

I want to thank Dr. Ronald Howard for awakening my passion for the subject of decision making. Since then it has been difficult for me to think of anything else. I also thank Dr. Colonel Anthony Rizzo who introduced me to the concept of permanent errors; those for which you can only apologize but cannot change the outcome.

In the development of this book and an associated training course I often engaged colleagues for brutally frank feedback. I want to thank Dr. Kevin Forsberg, Ken Mosteller, Dr. John Chiorini, Jim Whalen, Bill Flury, Dr. Joe Keogh, Dan Swaigen, and Bill Van Vleet for their unvarnished feedback.

In addition, I tapped into a diverse set of business executives for their perspectives. I want to thank Herb Myers, Roger Fuller, Dave House, Dave Smith, Dr. Charles Arnold, Carol Arnold, Tom Powell, and Don Putterman for their valuable influence.

Dr. Rick Giarrusso and Dr. Thomas Seyller, both with PhDs in Decision Analysis under Dr. Howard, confirmed that my material was unique, original, and worthwhile and that I should continue with the development.

Herb Myers introduced me to Dr. Leonard Bertain, another consultant and nonfiction author, who has provided valuable insight and feedback.

I received valuable input and editing advice from John Miles, and Bob Mott. They helped make the material professional and readable. I am grateful for their assistance.

A special thank you to Lauren Murphy, my ongoing John Wiley & Sons editor who, after some convincing, got the Wiley team enthusiastic about championing this book into the business marketplace.

I especially appreciate that my wife, Constance Heldman, who has always supported the idea of this book, and provided continuous valuable input, and urged me on in spite of periodic mental blocks. We both believe this work is important, especially for the younger generation about to make critical life-determining decisions. We intend to develop a book for young people to help them make better quality-of-life decisions.

May your life benefit from better decisions made based on your improved decision fitness.

PREFACE