Thursday, November 14, 2013

A Recommended Reading

For quite some time, I have been looking for something worth reading and sharing with others. I have plowed through a lot of books and articles and ended up in the land of slightly bored or frustrated by the number of old ideas getting repackaged and being called “new.” For the most part, nothing was thought-provoking or extremely well written to the degree that I would read it again or recommend it to others.

However, I did delight in reading an interview by Melinda Merino of Ram Charan, one of the worlds’s preeminent advisors to CEOs for the past 35 years, about decision-making in the November 2013 issue of the Harvard Business Review. Called “You Can’t Be a Wimp - Make the Tough Calls,” Charan points out that leaders now have to deal with many more variables and constituencies than ever before. In particular, they have to “cut through all of that complexity and to make subjective judgements about highly ambiguous, and constantly changing factors.” Given these difficulties, Charan  explains that “The best executives know which decisions to focus on (and which to delegate), when to make a decision, and what the risk of not making a decision.” The keys to successful decision-making, according to Charan, are to increase one’s ability to have perceptual acuity, i.e. “the ability to see change coming,” along with qualitative judgement and credibility which helps gain acceptance for difficult decisions.

Overall, this is a good article and one worth reading. Here is the link: http://hbr.org/2013/11/you-cant-be-a-wimp-make-the-tough-calls/ar/1 Check it out and I hope you find it helpful.

Geery Howe, M.A. Consultant, Executive Coach, Trainer in Leadership, Strategic Planning and Organizational Change Morning Star Associates 319 - 643 - 2257

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