Weekend Leadership Reading: 7/17/20

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Weekends are time when things slow down a little. Your weekend shouldn’t be two more regular workdays. 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 HBS Working Knowledge: It’s Time to Reset Decision-Making in Your Organization

“Clear decision-making in a crisis depends on sound methodology and gathering information from a variety of sources. Advice from Boris Groysberg and Sarah Abbott.”

From Beth Jensen: Flywheel Cofounder: “There Really Is No Wrong Decision.”

“Ruth Zukerman, the cofounder of indoor biking fitness companies SoulCycle and Flywheel, had no idea she was taking the first step toward her entrepreneurial career the day she nervously walked into her first spin class at a huge gym on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. The daughter of a difficult and demanding mother, Zukerman struggled with low self-esteem, and that day was even deeper in uncharted territory as she faced divorce with two young children.”

From Irving Wladawsky-Berger: Decision Making in Our Increasingly Complex Organizations

“A couple of years ago I attend a seminar by University of Toronto professor Avi Goldfarb, who along with UoT colleagues has been conducting research on the economic value of AI. Goldfarb explained that the best way to assess the impact of a new radical technology is to look at how the technology reduces the cost of a widely used function. For example, computers are essentially powerful calculators whose cost of digital operations has been dramatically going down over the past several decades thanks to Moore’s Law. Over the years, we’ve learned to define all kinds of tasks in terms of such digital operations, e.g., inventory management, financial transactions, word processing, photography. Similarly, the economic value of the Internet can be described as reducing the cost of communications and of search, enabling us to find and access all kinds of information, – including text, pictures music and videos.”

From Brett Nelson: How To Make A Hard Call In Six Steps

“One such executive is Joni Fedders, President of Aileron. Founded by Iams pet-food billionaire Clay Mathile, Dayton, Ohio-based business boot camp Aileron aims to bring big-time management techniques to smaller companies, with instruction from business owners and experts (not academics). Clear decision-making is core to the curriculum, says Fedders, who outlines a six-step approach for tricky conundrums. ‘Don’t be afraid to go back a step or two, depending on what you discover,’ she adds. ‘It’s an iterative process.'”

From Ben Lyttleton: proving decisions in soccer and in business

“This sort of training is shaping the future of soccer coaching. It’s a gamified 3D simulation that the most progressive clubs in the world are already using today. Similar tools are increasingly popular in the business world, where the soccer field and players are replaced by clients and suppliers. VR makes the process more challenging than a theoretical exercise would be: The visual input, time pressure, and stress feel real. But the safe environment allows learners to try out options that the risk-averse might otherwise avoid. The trainings can be repeated, with feedback and scores recorded for every repetition, which facilitates a deeper process of learning.”

From Manfred F. R. Kets de Vries: How Regret Can Be Your Friend

“When managed properly, regret is a great decision-making tool.”

Book Suggestions

Talk, Inc.: How Trusted Leaders Use Conversation to Power their Organizations by Boris Groysberg and Michael Slind

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, and Howard Raiffa

Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman

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