Leadership & Decision Making, Simplifying the Complex
Learn DMO or “Decision Making Optimization” (Taking Optimal Decisions)
Book Review
From SEO to SMO to CRO, digital marketers love to optimize everything. If you ask me to define Harjeet’s book in 3 words, I would say, it is all about DMO or Decision Making Optimization.
Harjeet reminds me of a famous quote which is attributed to Einstein, “If you can’t explain it to a six year old, you don’t understand it yourself”. As an author & blogger, Harjeet’s strength is simplifying the complex. I have been reading his blogs and microblogs on LinkedIn regularly for more than five years now. He has distilled his wisdom in his two books, “Nothing About Business” and the latest one is “How Leaders Decide- Tackling Biases and Risks in Decision making”.
I use a simple management concept for making my decisions viz. cost benefit analysis (alongwith intuition). But the challenge with the approach is that you have to quantify the costs and benefits (often qualitative data) to make an optimum decision. So the book evoked my curiosity about how to enhance my decision making skills.
Nowadays we get so pre-occupied with the leadership buzzwords like Servant Leadership, HIPO, talent attraction etc so much that we forget about leadership basics such as decision making. Even retaining and attracting talent as a leader also requires right decisions at right time. At times, a quick and wrong decision is better than indecision because risk is essential component of business environment anyways. One of the chapters, “Indecision costs more than a bad decision” discusses this aspect in detail.
“How Leaders Decide” is a holistic guide to decision making for leaders and managers. The book starts with basic concepts like group decision making &decision making styles and moves on to complex concepts like data driven decision making, types of biases etc. The last part of the book covers decision execution and evaluation.
Harjeet simplifies even complex concepts like “Disconnect to Reconnect”. Reflection and contemplation is becoming more and more critical in our VUCA world. As he shared in a recent interview, “This book is not just for leaders. It is also for those who want to become leaders. One of the readers of this book is a 10 year old who told me every child should read this book”.
The book also discusses the hot topics of our times including influence of creativity, diversity, empowerment and sustainability on decision making. The book is also interesting to read with concepts such as frog effect and ostrich effect which immediately evoke your curiosity to take a deeper dive.
There is a leader in each one of us, waiting to realize her/his true potential. The book can bring out the leader in a budding manager and optimize the decision making skills of practicing managers and leaders.
Happy Reading. Happy Optimal Decision making.
Know more about the book and Harjeet here:-
How Leaders Decide (Amazon) | Personal Portal
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Book Review by Dr Amit Nagpal, Co Founder and Chief Community Builder, Bloggers Alliance
