Management Resources Guide

Leadership & Management Training
Critical Decision Making
How to Effect Better, Successful Decisions in
Companies, Organisations, and Teams
All programs are designed, written and produced to your organisation’s specific requirements.
What You Will Learn
Why did that leader make such a horrible decision? We have all asked that question when we
have observed a poor decision, whether it be in politics, business, athletics, or the non-profit
sector. Too often, observers attribute such flawed choices to incompetence, inexperience, a lack
of intelligence, or bad intentions. In most cases, though, the wrong decisions do not arise
because of these factors.
In this course, we examine why leaders and organisations make poor choices, digging deep into
cognitive psychology, group dynamics, and theories of organisational culture and systems to
help us understand why well-intentioned, capable people blunder. Moreover, we examine the
techniques and behaviours that leaders can employ to improve decision making in their
organisation. We focus on how leaders can design decision-making processes that marshal the
collective intellect in their organisations, bringing together the diverse expertise, perspectives,
and talents to determine the best course of action.
The course uses case studies to examine decision making at three levels: individual, group, and
organisational. We examine how individuals make choices. We show that most individuals do
not examine every possible alternative or collect enough information and data when making
choices. Instead, most of us draw on our experience, apply rules of thumb, and use other
heuristics when making decisions. As it turns out, most individuals are susceptible to what
psychologists call cognitive biases—decision traps that cause us to make certain systematic
mistakes when making choices.
Every one of our training programs is uniquely designed and tailored to meet your specific
circumstances and objectives.
Topic Menu includes but is not limited to:
Making High-Stakes Decisions.
Cognitive Biases.
Avoiding Decision-Making Traps.
Framing—Risk or Opportunity?
Intuition—Recognising Patterns.
Reasoning by Analogy.
Making Sense of Ambiguous Situations.
The Wisdom of Crowds?
Groupthink—Thinking or Conforming?
Deciding How to Decide.
Stimulating Conflict and Debate.
Keeping Conflict Constructive.
Creativity and Brainstorming.
The Curious Inability to Decide.
Achieving Closure through Small Wins.
Normal Accident Theory.
Normalising Deviance.
Three Lenses.
Practical Drift.
Ambiguous Threats and the Recovery
Window.
Connecting the Dots.
Seeking Out Problems.
Asking the Right Questions.
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