Smart Choices: A Practical Guide to Making Better Decisions

By Howard Raiffa and John S. Hammond

Book Overview

Become confident in your choices.

Where should I live? Is it time to get a new job? Which job candidate should I hire? What business strategy should I pursue?

We spend the majority of our lives making decisions, both big and small. Yet, even though our success is largely determined by the choices that we make, very few of us are equipped with useful decision-making skills. Because of this, we often approach our choices tentatively, or even fearfully, and avoid giving them the time and thought required to put our best foot forward.

In Smart Choices, John Hammond, Ralph Keeney, and Howard Raiffa--experts with over 100 years of experience resolving complex decision problems--offer a proven, straightforward, and flexible roadmap for making better and more impactful decisions, and offer the tools to achieve your goals in every aspect of your life.

Their step-by-step, divide-and conquer approach will teach you how to:
- Evaluate your plans
- Break your potential decision into its key elements
- Identify the key drivers that are most relevant to your goals
- Apply systematic thinking
- Use the right information to make the smartest choice

Smart Choices doesn't tell you what to decide; it tells you how. As you routinely use the process, you'll become more confident in your ability to make decisions at work and at home. And, more importantly, by applying its time-tested methods, you'll make better decisions going forward.

Be proactive. Don't wait until a decision is forced on you--or made for you. Seek out decisions that advance your long-term goals, values, and beliefs. Take charge of your life by making Smart Choices a lifetime habit.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1633691047
• ISBN13: 9781633691049
• Release Date: August 2015
• Publisher: Harvard Business Review Press
• Length: 256 Pages
• Weight: 1.05 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 5.3" x 7.9"

Customer Reviews

A useful guide for systematic decision-making

This is an excellent book. The title may make this appear to be one of the too-numerous mass-market books which claim to offer advice on business and personal decision-making but actually offer lots of specific admonitions which are based on values which the reader may not share (example: anything by Steven Covey). This book, however, doesn't try to sell you any of the the authors' values; instead it teaches you an effective process that you can use to analyze any decision-making situation and make the choices which are most effective for achieving your objectives, whatever they may be. The book treats the subject in the same systematic way that it might be treated in an academic decision theory text, only it is written in plain language which can be read quickly and easily comprehended by the general reader. It finishes with a summary outline (they call it a "roadmap") which is a useful quick reference.

Highly recommend this book for executives

As an executive I am faced with making key decisions almost every day. In many complex decisions there is almost always conflict between logical analysis vs. intuitive processing while there is a shortage of perfect information and time. Smart Decisions lays out a simple, clear and practical framework and process for decision making. Although many of the concepts are not novel, the power is that the book links various tools and technigues as discrete decision making steps. Each step builds on the next. They greatly enhance the concepts through many practical examples for making business and personal decisions. I highly recommend this book!