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Smart Choices: A Practical Guide to Making Better Decisions [平装](John S. Hammond |  |
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Smart Choices: A Practical Guide to Making Better Decisions [平装](John S. Hammond | |
![Smart Choices:A Practical Guide to Making Better Decisions [平装]](http://img.reader8.com/uploadfile/2013/0326/20130326093953134.jpg "Smart Choices:A Practical Guide to Making Better Decisions [平装](John S. Hammond)")
Amazon.com Review
Have you ever hired someone only to regret your decision two months later? Or looked at your financial portfolio and wondered why you bought the stocks you did? In Smart Choices, authors John S. Hammond, Ralph L. Keeney, and Howard Raiffa take the guesswork out of the decision-making process and offer a systematic approach to making the right choice. Most of us have problems making decisions, because we've never learned how. The authors write:
Despite the importance of decision making to our lives, few of us ever receive any training in it. So we are left to learn from experience. But experience is a costly, inefficient teacher that teaches us bad habits along with good ones. Because decision situations vary so markedly, the experience of making one important decision often seems of little use when facing the next.
Smart Choices outlines eight elements involved in making the right decision, from identifying exactly what the decision is and specifying your objectives to considering risk tolerance and looking at how what you decide on today influences what you may decide in the future. The book is full of real-life situations and scenarios that effectively illustrate each element of a good decision. If you think the topic of making the right choice is mundane or a simple matter of common sense, then think again. Smart Choices will relieve you of the regret that so many of us carry because we didn't know how to "think it through." --Harry C. Edwards --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
From Publishers Weekly
In 1966, the Lovin' Spoonful had a #2 hit with "Did You Ever Have to Make Up Your Mind?" Two years later, Raiffa answered that question for a generation of academics with his book Decision Analysis, whose argumentAthat decision-making skills can be learned and applied as a discipline of their ownAmade Raiffa deeply influential in management and social science. Raiffa (a former professor at Harvard Business School), his longtime associate Hammond (a professor of management and engineering at the University of Southern California) and Ralph Keeney (The Art and Science of Negotiation) here explain decision-analysis techniques and stratagems for the benefit of nonspecialists. They provide substantial, straightforward explanations of concepts (risk tolerance, sunk costs, desirability curves) that sound arcane but may help readers to buy the right car, choose a mutual fund, decide on a school, or plan a vacation. Unfortunately, the lingo of self-help often substitutes for the jargon of management consulting, as when Raiffa's famous five decision steps become the trendy acronym PrOACT. And the example problems can seem clich?d, two-dimensional or implausible, even when based on fact. Nevertheless, recommendations like "Remember that the value of an incremental change depends on what you start with" and "Make sure your subordinates reflect your organization's risk tolerance in their decisions" are, at the least, good reminders that the logic of decision making is often counterintuitive; at best, they are an important, useful set of insights.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
From Booklist
The three authors, all of whom come from academic backgrounds and specialize in decision science, argue that "making smart choices is a fundamental life skill" that can be taught. They provide a practical model for decision making and demonstrate that it can be applied in both personal and business situations. They show that the key is to break the decision into its individual elements, identify those that are most important, and analyze potential outcomes. The authors also stress that decisions should be made before they turn into problems. Their so-called PROACTive approach can be broken down mnemonically. Identify the PRoblem, specify the Objectives, create Alternatives, understand the Consequences, and weigh the Trade-offs. Following these steps, one must clarify uncertainty, assess risks, and be aware of what other choices a decision might create. From choosing a career to planning an employee party, the authors use a wide range of examples to demonstrate their approach. David Rouse --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
Review
"In Smart Choices, John Hammond, Ralph Keeney, and Howard Raiffa tell us in plain language how to make optimal decisions in our everyday lives. They combine one hundred collective years of experience in an exceptional resource that takes the reader step-by-step through problem formulation and final decision." ?Jerome P. Kassirer, editor-in-chief, New England Journal of Medicine
"Throughout Smart Choices, Hammond, Keeney, and Raiffa provide valuable insight and guidance on the inevitable and ongoing negotiation with yourself when facing a difficult decision. By following their effective, systematic process, anyone can make important personal or business decisions with greater clarity, confidence, and efficiency." ?Stephen J. Hemsley, former head of Strategy, Technology, and Operating Professional Service Lines, Arthur Andersen -- Review
Review
"In Smart Choices, John Hammond, Ralph Keeney, and Howard Raiffa tell us in plain language how to make optimal decisions in our everyday lives. They combine one hundred collective years of experience in an exceptional resource that takes the reader step-by-step through problem formulation and final decision." –Jerome P. Kassirer, editor-in-chief, New England Journal of Medicine
"Throughout Smart Choices, Hammond, Keeney, and Raiffa provide valuable insight and guidance on the inevitable and ongoing negotiation with yourself when facing a difficult decision. By following their effective, systematic process, anyone can make important personal or business decisions with greater clarity, confidence, and efficiency." –Stephen J. Hemsley, former head of Strategy, Technology, and Operating Professional Service Lines, Arthur Andersen
"In Smart Choices, John Hammond, Ralph Keeney, and Howard Raiffa tell us in plain language how to make optimal decisions in our everyday lives. They combine one hundred collective years of experience in an exceptional resource that takes the reader step-by-step through problem formulation and final decision." –Jerome P. Kassirer, editor-in-chief, New England Journal of Medicine
"Throughout Smart Choices, Hammond, Keeney, and Raiffa provide valuable insight and guidance on the inevitable and ongoing negotiation with yourself when facing a difficult decision. By following their effective, systematic process, anyone can make important personal or business decisions with greater clarity, confidence, and efficiency." –Stephen J. Hemsley, former head of Strategy, Technology, and Operating Professional Service Lines, Arthur Andersen
John Hammond, Ph.D., is a renowned management consultant and a former professor at both Harvard and MIT. Also the coauthor of Strategic Market Planning, he lives in Lincoln, Massachusetts. Ralph Keeney, Ph.D., is the author of Value-Focused Thinking and runs a consulting practice in San Francisco, where he lives. He is also a professor at the University of Southern California. Howard Raiffa, Ph.D., now professor emeritus , has taught the art and science of decision making and negotiations in the Schools of Business, Public Policy, Law, and Medicine at Harvard University for almost five decades. He is widely recognized as one of the founders of the field of decision sciences. He lives in Belmont, Massachusetts.
Preface 1. Making Smart Choices--How to think about your whole decision problem: a proactive approach 2. Problem--How to define your decision problem to solve the right problem 3. Objectives--How to clarify what you're really trying to achieve with your decision 4. Alternatives--How to make smarter choices by creating better alternatives to choose from 5. Consequences--How to describe how well each alternative meets your objectives 6. Tradeoffs--How to make tough compromises when you can't achieve all your objectives at once 7. Uncertainty--How to think about and act on uncertainties affecting your decision 8. Risk Tolerance--How to account for your appetite for risks 9. Linked Decisions--How to plan ahead by effectively coordinating current and future decisions 10. Psychological Traps--How to avoid some of the tricks your mind can play on you when you're deciding 11. The Wise Decision Maker--How to make smart choices a way of life 12. A Roadmap to Smart Choices About the Authors
Chapter 1 Making Smart Choices
Our decisions shape our lives. Made consciously or unconsciously, with good or bad consequences, they represent the fundamental tool we use in facing the opportunities, the challenges, and the uncertainties of life.
? Should I go to college? If so, where? To study what?
? What career should I pursue? What job should I take?
? Should I get married now, or wait? Should I have children? If so, when and how many?
? Where should I live? Should I trade up to a larger house? What can I contribute to my community?
? Which job candidate should I hire? What marketing strategies should I recommend for my company?
? Since I feel unfulfilled, should I change jobs? Go back to school? Move?
? How should I invest my savings? When should I retire? To do what? Where?
Such questions mark the progress of our lives and our careers, and the way we answer them determines, to a large extent, our place in society and in the world. Our success in all the roles we play--student, worker, boss, citizen, spouse, parent, individual--turns on the decisions we make.
Making Decisions is a Fundamental Life Skill
Some Decisions will be fairly obvious--"no-brainers." Your bank account is low, but you have a two-week vacation coming up and you want to get away to someplace warm to relax with your family. Will you accept your in-laws' offer of free use of their Florida beachfront condo? Sure. You like your employer and feel ready to move forward in your careers. Will you step in for your boss for three weeks while she attends a professional development course? Of course.
But the no-brainers are the exceptions. Most of the important decisions you'll face in life are tough and complex, with no easy or obvious solutions. And they probably won't affect you alone. They'll affect your family, your friends, your coworkers and many others known and unknown. Making good decisions is thus one of the most important determinants of how well you meet your responsibilities and achieve your personal and professional goals. In short, the ability to make smart choices is a fundamental life skill.
Most of us, however, dread making hard decisions. By definition, tough choices have high stakes and serious consequences; they involve numerous and complex considerations; and they expose us to the judgments of others. The need to make a difficult decision puts us at risk of anxiety, confusion, doubt, error, regret, embarrassment, loss. No wonder we find it har to settle down and choose. In living through a major decision, we suffer periods of alternating self-doubt and overconfidence, of procrastination, of wheel-spinning and flip-flopping, of frustration, even of desperation. Our discomfort often leads us to make decisions too quickly, or too slowly, or too arbitrarily. We flip a coin, toss a dart, let someone else--or time--decide. The result: a mediocre choice, dependent on luck for success. It's only afterwards that we realize we could have made a smarter choice. And by then it's too late.
You Can Learn to Make Better Decisions
Why do we have such trouble? It's simple: we don't know how to make decisions well. Despite the importance of decision making to our lives, few of us ever receive any training in it. So we are left to learn from experience. But experience is a costly, inefficient teacher that teaches us bad habits along with good ones. Because decision situations vary so markedly, the experience of making one important decision often seems of little use when facing the next. How is deciding what job to take or what house to buy similar to deciding what school to send your children to, what medical treatment to pursue for a serious illness, or what balance to strike among cost, aesthetics, and function in planning a new office park?
The connection among the decisions you make lies not in what you're deciding, but in how you decide. The only way to really raise your odds of making a good decision is to learn to use a good decision-making process--one that gets you to the best solution with a minimal loss of time, energy, money, and composure.
An effective decision-making process fulfills these six criteria:
? It focuses on what's important.
? It is logical and consistent.
? It acknowledges both subjective and objective factors and blends analytical with intuitive thinking.
? It requires only as much information and analysis as is necessary to resolve a particular dilemma.
? It encourages and guides the gathering of relevant information and informed opinion.
? It is straightforward, reliable, easy to use, and flexible.
A decision-making approach that addresses these criteria can be practiced on decisions major and minor--what movie to see, what car to buy, what vacation to take, what investment to make, what department head to hire, what medical treatment to pursue. And the more you use such an approach, the more efficient and effective it will become. As you grow more skilled and your confidence grows, making decisions will become second nature to you. In fact, you may find your friends and associates asking you for help and advice with their tough choices!
Use the PrOACT Approach to Make Smart Choices
This book provides you with a straightforward, proven approach for making decisions. It does not tell you what to decide, but it does show you how. Our approach meets the six criteria listed above. It helps you to see both the tangible and the intangible aspects of your decision situation more clearly and to translate all pertinent facts, feelings, opinions, beliefs, and advice into the best possible choice. Highly flexible, it is applicable to business and professional decisions, to personal decisions, to family decisions--any decision you need to make.
One thing the method won't do is make hard decisions easy. That's impossible. Hard decisions are hard because they're complex, and no one can make that complexity disappear. But you can manage complexity sensibly. How? Just like you'd climb up a mountain: one step at a time.
Our approach takes one step at a time. We have found that even the most complex decision can be analyzed and resolved by considering a set of eight elements. The first five--Problem, Objective, Alternatives, Consequences, Tradeoffs--constitute the core of our approach and are applicable to virtually any decision. The acronym for these--PrOACT--serves as a reminder that the best approach to decision situations is a proactive one. The worst thing you can do is wait until a decision is forced on you--or made for you.
The Eight Elements of Smart Choices
Problem
Objectives
Alternatives
Consequences
Tradeoffs
-----------------------
Uncertainty
Risk Tolerance
Linked Decisions
The three remaining elements--uncertainty, risk tolerance, and linked decisions--help clarify decisions in volatile or evolving environments. Some decisions won't involve these elements, but many of your most important decisions will.
The essence of the PrOACT approach is to divide and conquer. To resolve a complex decision situation, you break it into these elements and think systematically about each one, focusing on those that are key to your particular situation. Then you reassemble your thoughts and analysis into the smart choice. So, although our method may not make a hard decision easy, it will certainly make it easier.
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