How good leaders make bad decisions
… and right after the McKinsey survey, HBR has an article by Andrew Campbell, Jo Whitehead (Ashridge) and Sydney Finkelstein (Dartmouth) on neuroscience revelations about how leaders’ judgment gets distorted. It seems we have systematic biases, then land on initial conclusions we are reluctant to change, and the article offers a ‘red flag’ process for guarding against the dangers.
How companies make good decisions
McKinsey asked senior managers in companies that made good and bad decisions about their decision-making processes: who was involved, what drove the decisions, the analysis done, role of politics etc. Good to hear that hard benefits – like profits! – featured in successful decision-making disciplines. Article. More support for evidence-based management I guess.
Seize Advantage in a Downturn
More (mostly) helpful advice re the downturn from HBR is Seize the advantage in a downturn in which David Rhodes and Daniel Stelter of BCG offer thoughts to stabilize your business and find opportunities … but beware! Read more
12 manage vs. Wikipedia on management
The post on game theory reminds me to recommend the 12manage site for (mostly) authoritative explanations and discussions on a wide range of management topics, including strategic management – multiple languages too! Wikipedia does OK within its own constraints, but as I’ve blogged before, it’s pretty flakey on strategy. Jaap de Jong who edits 12manage does a great job managing and moderating the content and discussion to keep it on track, though it’s not possible to prevent entirely some off-target comments getting through.
Anyone using game theory?
Though I have heard of game theory being used in a few particular and special cases (e.g. the auctioning of 3G cellphone licenses) I have not seen anything of it being used in general strategic management or business planning. The strategy textbooks dismiss it as too uni-dimensional and limited to special cases to be useful, and I can find virtually no articles in e.g. Harvard Business Review or McKinsey Quarterly giving any encouraging cases where it has been helpful. (Though I did see on 12manage reference to a strategy+business article on Barry Nalebuff).
Does anyone know otherwise?