Three Star Leadership

The GO Point by Michael Useem is a book you should read.

Thousands of business books are published every year. A few hundred offer important insights. Another few hundred are easy and fun to read. This is the first business book I've read in a long time that meets all my criteria for a great business book

• It is about an important business topic: decision making.
• It is based on solid research.
• It covers a broad range of applications.
• It uses stories and examples to make it easy to read and learn.
• It uses structured writing to group key points and makes them usable.

At the outset, Useem tells us that he'll do two things in the book.

First, he'll take us inside the heads of decision makers. Some of those are living people that Useem has interviewed. Others are historical figures like Robert E. Lee.

Useem takes us inside those head by means of stories, the way that humans have always shared experience with each other. This book is filled with great and useful stories because Useem has developed a vast fund of stories and because he is one of the best storytellers among current management writers.

In addition to the stories, Useem has created "templates" for handling different decision challenges. He groups the key learning points together, using a technique called structured writing to make the points easy to select and use.

Each template is devoted to a specific kind of decision challenge. The bulk of the book lays out the challenges, beginning with urgent decisions.

Urgent decisions are decisions that must be made right away. Useem covers those in the chapter called "In the Heat of the Moment."

The chapter called "Getting into the Decision Game" addresses a common problem: how do you know when it's time to act? You'll pick up tips on when to quit gathering information and plunge ahead with a decision and when to hold off making a decision until you understand the situation better.

"Using the Net" doesn't have anything to do with computers. Instead it's about using advisors to gather both information and perspective. There's some especially insightful material on using an "outer network" of advisors to avoid groupthink.

The chapter on "Seeing Ahead" addresses issues of prediction. Useem uses decisions made at the battle of Gettysburg to show how each decision affects the possible range and importance of future decisions.

The chapter called "Making Decisions" offers an opportunity for you to try your hand at applying the lessons presented in earlier chapters. Useem stresses the importance of making a decision and moving ahead when the time is right. This chapter is one of the things that make this book both valuable and useful.

The final chapters in the book cover special situations. There's a chapter on ethics called "Transcending Personal Profit" and an excellent chapter on the dumb things that smart decision makers often do. That one's called "Avoiding Unforced Errors."

Michael Useem has created a book that you should read if making decisions is part of what your do and you'd like to make better decisions. But he's also created a book that will give you insight into how people think about decisions and then act on that thought.

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