What you could learn from ‘The Decision Book’ by Krogerus and Tschappeler (2017, 149 pages)

Posted by Max on January 31, 2019 in Book reviews | Leave a comment

Most people when they face a problem, find the first solution, check that it could work, and then make a decision.

While fast, this approach is fraught with bias.  Intuition, while fast, only works in stable (deterministic) environments, where you have been able to build expertise (circa 10,000 hours will good feedback) – see Thinking Fast and Slow.

A better approach to problem-solving and decision-making, it to approach the problems from a number of different perspectives.  Frameworks are a great way to force you to think differently about a problem.

In their book, ‘The Decision Book’, the authors provide a list of the top decision-making frameworks and examples.

Here is a list of the top frameworks (and Wikipedia links), and when to use them:

• Eisenhower Matrix – focus on important not urgent p10
• SWOT – company analyse p12
• BCG growth/share matrix – what products to keep/invest in p14
• Consequence model – understand the impact of delay on decisions p43
• Double loop learning – get better all the time p101
• Pareto principle – focus on what matters p105
• Diffusion model – how product are (or not) adopted p117
• Hersey-Blanchard model – leading with different followers p129
• Drexler/Sibbet team model – building a team p140

The Decision Book is a cracking little book, which provides good summaries of common models and a few new gems.  Read this book, if you want to improve your decision-making.

You can buy the Decision Book here on Amazon UK