Value-Focused Thinking: A Path to Creative Decisionmaking

By Ralph L. Keeney

Book Overview

The standard way of thinking about decisions is backwards, says Ralph Keeney; people focus first on identifying alternatives rather than on articulating values. A problem arises and people react, placing the emphasis on mechanics and fixed choices instead of on the objectives that give decision-making its meaning. In this book, Keeney shows how recognizing and articulating fundamental values can lead to the identification of decision opportunities and the creation of better alternatives. The intent is to be proactive and to select more attractive decisions to ponder before attempting any solutions.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0674931971
• ISBN13: 9780674931978
• Release Date: April 1992
• Publisher: Harvard University Press
• Length: 432 Pages
• Weight: 1.67 lbs.
• Dimensions: 9.5" x 1.3" x 6.5"

Customer Reviews

Enlightening and practical approach

I am finishing my Masters in Operations Research and Decisions, and I had several courses on Decision theory. This book taught me far more than most of the courses, and it surely helps me more than all together when it comes to real-life decision making. I like Keeney's approach in that it is simple but strong. While he does give a strong mathematical foundation, he also explains the intuition behind his theory. Every time someone asks about what I have learned in the MSc I like to give an example I thought about while reading his book (and using his approach). Let's suppose you are seating on the Sofa and you want to eat something, what do you do? 100% of my friends answered that they go to the kitchen and look for something eat. That's exactly what Keeney is against: to take decisions based on the alternatives (what he calls alternative focus thinking). What his approach would recommend in the described situation, is to stay on the Sofa and think hard about the food that you would mostly like to eat. Than, go to the kitchen and see if you have it. If you do, great! If not, does the pleasure of eating it pay for the pain of going out to buy it? The point is that usually you wouldn't ask yourself this question if you were already in front of the second-best option without knowing what you really want. The book is well written and full of day-to-day and more complicated examples. All of them applied by the author in his own life or in huge corporations. Very good reading!

Recommended

According to Dave Reiter: This book is a bit more complex than Smart Choices. It suggests that you always start with your values/preferences for any decision that you want to make. (I think this is often, but not always, a good idea. I think sometimes you're better off starting with the framing of the decision.) This is also a bit dry.

Great background for those who liked Smart Choices

A very helpful book. Parts of it contain more details than I wanted to know about specific detailed applications of the decision-making techniques to government and industry. However, I did enjoy the parts where Keeney describes how he uses the techniques in his personal life. Particularly amusing and informative are the parts where he talks about how he and his wife decided what to name their baby, and how he decided not to get tested for colon cancer and spent the time playing squash instead.