Weekends are time when things slow down a little. Your weekend shouldn’t be two more regular work days. That’s a sure road to burnout. Take time to refresh yourself. Take time for something different. Take time for some of that reading you can’t find time for during the week.

Here are choice articles on hot leadership topics culled from the business schools, the business press and major consulting firms. This week there are articles about decision making.

From Shane Parrish: The Decision Matrix: How to Prioritize What Matters

“The decisions we spend the most time on are rarely the most important ones. Not all decisions need the same process. Sometimes, trying to impose the same process on all decisions leads to difficulty identifying which ones are most important, bogging us down and stressing us out.”

From Rick Lynch and Jay Galeota: 4 Ways to Pressure-Test Strategic Decisions, Inspired by the U.S. Military

“Every leader wants to avoid major strategic mistakes, but, in a complex world, it’s hard to anticipate all the forces that might impact your goal. It’s vital to find weaknesses in your strategies before you implement them — and developing a rigorous process to do so.”

From Henning Piezunka and Linus Dahlander: In Crowdsourcing, You Have to Know How to Say “No Thanks”

“At the best of times, corporate innovation is a quest against the odds. The likelihood of finding an idea that not only is novel and valuable but also lends itself to practical implementation is almost always low. The scarcity of these ideas has driven many organisations to look outside their own walls. Crowdsourcing enables firms to include the general public (including current and potential customers) in their idea generation process.”

From Melanie C. Nolen: New Research Says CEOs Should Follow Their Intuition

“The case is mounting for the benefits of using intuitive awareness at the C-Suite level. A 2016 KPMG study found that only one-third of the 2,200 CEOs surveyed trusted their data and resulting analytics, and according to the PwC Global Data and Analytics Survey, 59 percent of decision makers say the analysis they require relies primarily on human judgment rather than machine algorithms.”

From Oded Netzer: Quantitative Intuitive Decision Making

“At the heart of good decision making in today’s fast and complex environment is the ability to see how things fit together—and perhaps more crucially, spot when things do not have a good or logical fit—quickly and effectively, and leverage these connections to derive insights and make prompt data-driven decisions.”

Thanks to Smartbrief on Leadership for pointing me to this story

Book Suggestions

Decisive: How to Make Better Choices in Life and Work by Chip Heath and Dan Heath

Smart Choices: A Practical Guide to Making Better Decisions by John S. Hammond, Ralph L. Keeney, Howard Raiffa

Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman

HBR’s 10 Must Reads on Making Smart Decisions

Every week I share some recommendations of business books that I think are worth a look. Follow this link to the most recent list.

Every Monday, I do a blog post about business reading and business books. Follow this link to my review of Leaders: Myth and Reality.