Decision Making

The Four Cs of Decision Making

Posted by on Nov 9, 2021 | 0 comments

In a world of abundant data and complex organizational dynamics, many companies and organizations struggle with a proliferation of meetings in which inefficient processes lead to uneven quality in decisions. This is discouraging and annoying for participants and costly for organizations. A 2019 study by McKinsey & Company reported that fewer than half of respondents said that decisions were timely and 61% complained that at least half of the time spent making them was not well spent. That adds up to a waste of over 500,000 hours of managers’ time in an average Fortune 500 company—that’s...

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Don’t Be So Sure: The Perils of Certainty

Posted by on Jul 23, 2019 | 0 comments

This post first appeared on Forbes.com. I was certain that my flight to Chicago was at 10:30, so I aimed to leave for the airport by 9:00. But at 8:30 when I checked to verify the exact takeoff time, my chest seized up. My flight was leaving in less than an hour! I yelled for my husband to take me to the airport now. By the time I made it through security, the boarding gate had closed. I watched my flight take off without me. Maybe something like this has happened to you. You felt so utterly sure of something that you did not consider the possibility that you were wrong, not...

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How You Slice It

Posted by on May 27, 2011 | 0 comments

How You Slice It

What are your priorities? Are you living them? There’s a group called NotMyPriorities.org that hands out postcards depicting a pie chart of the United States’ budget. The Pentagon’s slice is well over half the pie, with each of the other categories (education, health, environment, justice, housing, etc.) occupying just a tiny wedge. My older daughter picked up this postcard from a sidewalk protester and asked us about the chart. Next thing you know my husband had us all (including our preschooler) drawing our own pies and dividing them up as we saw fit. “Imagine...

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Tapping Into Your Inner Board of Directors

Posted by on Oct 10, 2010 | 0 comments

Have you ever been stuck at a decision point, paralyzed by inner conflict, pulled in multiple directions by different needs, desires, and fears? Instead of trying to choose among these warring factions of yourself, perhaps it is time to get them to work together. Cast them as your internal Board of Directors, give each a seat at the table, and work out a deal so that you can move forward. Here’s one way to do it:* Step 1: Identify the topic or decision in neutral terms. Imagine (or draw) a boardroom table with the topic in the middle. Step 2: Identify between four and six internal...

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Breaking Up (With Your Job) is Hard To Do

Posted by on Jul 17, 2010 | 0 comments

I have a client who is completely fed up with her job. She is spread too thin, underpaid, under-resourced, isolated, and dissatisfied. She has tried hard to make the job work better, but it has now become clear that the fundamental problems with this job are not going to change. She sees that it will never provide what she wants and needs from her job: financial reward, respect, teamwork, meaning, and balance. If this job were a boyfriend, her friends would all be urging her to dump him and find someone more worthy. And yet she is finding it difficult to leave – in part because she feels...

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Where is Your Outrage?

Posted by on Feb 10, 2010 | 0 comments

  I know I’m late to the party, but I just finished reading Freakonomics by Steven Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner, a provocative and fun to read economic analysis of many social phenomena that turned many of my assumptions on their heads. I like that. But it also sheds new light on something that I encounter often in coaching – fear of change. In their chapter on parenting, Levitt and Dubner discuss risk and demonstrate how wrong our calculations of risk frequently are. For example, many more children die from drowning in a swimming pool than by gunshot even though there relatively...

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