Accessible and practical--the best guide to making decisions

books:


	• Smart Choices: A Practical Guide to Making Better Decisions John S. Hammond, Ralph L. Keeney, ... Harvard Business School Press, 1998 - 244 pages average customer review:based on 44 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Perfect Choice

If you want to know about decision making and want to understand everything that is written, buy this one. Very good.

Packaged decision making

A colleague once told me that Steven Covey's 7 habits is packaged common sense. This book is packaged decision making. Doubtless all of us use some or all of the techniques and methodologies described in this book, but probably not in as cohesive and efficient a manner. The authors divide their basic decision making methodology into the following:

1. Problem description
2. Defining objectives
3. Generating viable alternatives
4. Evaluating consequences of alternatives
5. Considering tradeoffs between alternatives

They also discuss:
6. Uncertainty
7. Risk tolerance
8. Linked decisions
9. Psychological traps (behavioral issues)
10. How to implement and refine the system
I have just completed the book, and liked the content and the writing which is replete with useful examples. It remains to be seen how easy it is to implement the methodology and make it habit.

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Wise Decision Making

The ability to make smart choices is a fundamental life skill and this is a no-nonsense and practical book written by three academics. If you're looking for a guide to making better decisions, whether in private life or business, look no further. The set-up of the book is brilliant. It starts qualitatively with stating the problem, objectives, consequences, alternatives etc. and leads to more quantitative tools incl. my favoured decision tree within uncertainty and risk tolerance. The final chapter says it all what this fine book is about; The Wise Decision Maker.

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Accessible and practical--the best guide to making decisions

Most books on decision-making fall into two categories--anecdotal and analytical. The anecdotal ones provide insights, motivation, and case studies of decisions, but few specific techniques. The analytical ones provide powerful techniques, but require mathematical sophistication and often lose sight of the more subjective aspects of decision-making. This book provides the perfect balance. There are specific techniques, clearly stated and backed up with case studies involving common personal decisions. It addresses the key concerns in any decision--understanding the problem, goals, and alternatives, balancing multiple conflicting goals, and dealing with uncertainty.

You can read this book quickly, but I'd suggest you then give it a more thoughtful re-reading since it is full of powerful techniques for making decisions. The Even Swap method alone is worth the price of the book. This simple technique helps you make a decision when you have multiple, competing goals or considerations, as is usually the case in the choices we all need to make. It surfaces the key issues and succeeds in cases in which more complex, analytical techniques fall apart. This is an excellent book for anyone who makes personal or business decisions...and isn't that all of us?

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Dull reading at times, but still a "smart choice"

The underlying principles in "Smart Choices" are intuitive: be focused and be thorough. While trudging through its tedious explanations can be a chore, "Smart Choices" raises several thought-provoking points in good decision making.

First, decision alternatives aren't always as they seem. With some effort, finding new, creative alternatives can often provide a better reward than looking at the obvious choices. Moreover, the decision itself may end up being a completely different one altogether, once one takes the time to define it.

Chapter 11 also contains compelling information on the psychology of a decision. Word phrasing, anchoring, heuristics and a host of other "traps" can affect an otherwise soundly conceived decision. As a reader, Chapter 11 also provides a much-needed interesting finish to the dullness of the material in rest of the book.

You'll find that much of the information communicated in "Smart Choices" goes well beyond the "OK, I get it" phase. Superfluous explanations abound, as the entirety of the book could be conveyed in under fifty pages (opposed to its current 244). Even so, more case studies and graphs, and less verbal filler, could do the book justice in communicating its ideas effectively.

Like so many business-applied-to-life systematizations, the practicality of "Smart Choices" only goes so far. Nevertheless, the elements that are practical can have a huge impact in how you formulate decisions. Three and half stars.

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reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9

Making smart choices is a fundamental life skill, relevant to anyone: managers, doctors, lawyers, teachers, students, parents, young, old. Your decisions will shape and influence the course of your professional career and the quality of your personal life--the ability to make good decisions is a key factor in determining whether you achieve your goals. To help you increase your chances of finding satisfying solutions, Smart Choices blends the art and science of decision making into a straightforward, proven approach for making tough choices. Smart Choices doesn't tell you what to decide; it tells you how. Authors Hammond, Keeney, and Raiffa, among the world's best-known experts on resolving complex decision problems, blend the art and the science of decision making into accessible steps that lead you to consider your choices both intuitively and analytically. Here, for the first time, is a flexible system that can be applied to business decisions, to personal decisions, to family decisions--to any decision you make.

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