Product Description

We’ve all watched smart, experienced leaders make flawed—even catastrophic—decisions. How can the risks be reduced? And how can you be sure that you’re making the right decisions?

In this fascinating and instructive book, Sydney Finkelstein, Jo Whitehead, and Andrew Campbell—each a distinguished expert on strategy and decision-making in large organisations - show how the usually beneficial processes of the human mind can become traps. Experience and emotion can create hidden conflicts, even while we’re striving for objectivity. The imbalance may cause us to make a bad decision even though we think we are being objective.

Think Again provides a new model to help us make better decisions. With vivid stories ranging across industries and disciplines, the authors deconstruct bad decisions and identify the forces that have produced them. They go on to show you how to recognize the conditions—red flags—under which good decision making is most likely to falter, and offer a way of selecting safeguards that reduce the risk and ensure better outcomes.

There is no guarantee for perfect decisions. But with Think Again, you can understand the hurdles between you and success, manage to counterbalance their effects, and make better decisions—every day.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #124335 in Books
• Published on: 2009-01-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 256 pages

Review
A timely new book. --The Observer, January 25, 2009

Review
Reading this book will not mean a mistake-free career. But it may be one of your better decisions.

Review
You can't banish bad luck, say the authors, but you can go some way to eliminating human flaws in decisionmaking.

Customer Reviews

Cracking good read
The contention of this book is that we do not make decisions the way we think we do; we don't lay out the alternatives and pick the best one, instead we use our instincts to pick the best path and then post-rationalise to justify our decision. It is just as well we do this as otherwise we would never be able to live our lives and would be stuck in "analysis paralysis". However there are risks that our instincts mislead us. The authors use interesting anecdotes and pieces of research to make their points about how we make decisions and then show us how to avoid the risks. I have found myself using their checklist when reviewing my own and others' decisions and have found it very useful. This is a rare example of a business book which is both fun to read and helpful. I would recommend it to anyone who has to make important decisions and is self aware enough to know that they might get them wrong sometimes. If you fit this category I am sure this book will make you "think again" about some of the decisions with which you are involved...and maybe take some actions that will improve them.

Enlightening account of "Decision making"
"Think again" is a fantastic book about science of decision making. It explains decision making process of our brain, common pitfalls and suggestions to avoid them. Best feature of the book is the interesting examples from the past where highly skilled and powerful people have made bad decisions. These examples are further explained in detail in the light of concepts elaborated in the book. Book also has useful suggestions for avoiding the decision making pitfalls.

The book is a light read and devoid of management jargon. Highly recommended, especially in current economic scenario.

An intriguing look at the tricks our minds play on us
Sometimes we really can't help ourselves. Or so argue the authors, Andrew Campbell, Sydney Finkelstein and Jo Whitehead, whose lively, eminently readable book reveals four sources of error humans make when reaching decisions. A series of vignettes brings the four errors across memorably and clearly, and I quickly recognised parallels from my own past.

But what to do about our error-prone ways? While we can't reprogramme our thinking, we can be taught to watch out for tripwires. The authors present four safeguards that, if applied properly, should lead businesspeople to do a double-take before veering off course.

While the book draws examples from the business world, I recommend it to anyone who wants to learn more about the ways our minds work, and work against us.