Making Better Decisions

Intended Audience
Strategic Managers, Business Developers, any senior executive involved in strategic decisions

Module Description
In any organization, from the small start-up to the large global company, a key role of executives is to make decisions and exercise judgment. Sound decision making becomes a critical success factor when decisions are strategic - meaning that the stakes are high, while the context is fraught with uncertainty and complexity. Analysis – as crucial as it is – can only take us so far; at the end of the day, analysis has to morph into synthesis, involving judgment calls. That’s precisely when the thinking of even the most experienced managers and management teams can come apart, potentially leading to missed opportunities or major disasters.

In this highly interactive one-day module, you will learn how easy it is for our brain to get side-tracked by common mental biases and even highjacked by emotions. You will also experience the difficulty of reaching a strategic team decision by consensus under intense time pressure, with limited information, in an uncertain, ambiguous and complex environment. The module will teach you how to avoid the most common mistakes when exercising your judgment and how to develop better decision processes in teams.

Here are some of the questions this module will explore:

• What are common biases in strategic decision making?
• How to work with data?
• How do emotions influence decision making?
• How are team decisions different from individual decisions – and how does this make them more difficult to manage?
• How to design better decision making processes in teams?

The module will address the stated questions and provide some insights to inspire you.

Stephan Schubert is Adjunct Professor of Strategy at INSEAD, faculty member at Ashridge Executive Education and Visiting Professor at DTU Business. Stephan has a deep interest in strategic issues, ranging from decision-making processes to business modeling, strategic leadership and organizational transformation. He pays particular attention to the role of mental frameworks, biases and hidden agendas in strategy development. He is a frequent traveler to the Gulf Region, where he directs and delivers strategy workshops and executive development programs for a variety of private sector and government clients. He has worked on client assignments in over 25 countries, from Chile to China. Among his past global clients are McKinsey, Vodafone, Lufthansa, Philips, Sinopec, Addax Petroleum Nigeria, as well as several mid-sized companies.