Recommended Resource – Judgment Calls

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Judgment Calls: Twelve Stories of Big Decisions and the Teams That Got Them Right

by Thomas H. Davenport and Brook Manville

About the Reference

Judgment Calls by Thomas H. Davenport and Brook Manville examines twelve mission critical decisions made by public and private organizations for the key aspects of the decision process employed and analytical approaches used. Through this exploration, Thomas and Brook discuss organizational factors influencing successful decision-making including:

  • Participative Problem-Solving Processes
  • Technology and Analytics
  • Power and Culture
  • Leaders Setting the Right Context

They assert that effective employment of these factors enhances organizational judgment and therefore its decision-making capability. The twelve detailed examples within their book serve as a roadmap for those seeking to further develop their organization’s decision-making ability.

Benefits of Using this Reference

StrategyDriven Contributors believe in the inherent value of reading books, such as Judgment Calls, that provide deep insights to the decision-making processes of respected organizations during critical situations. Thomas and Brook obviously had access to the senior leaders at each organization profiled; enabling them to garner the though processes and reasoning behind the decisions being made.

Valuable as it may be, we believe there are flaws in Thomas and Brook’s approach to ascertaining the key factors behind successful decisions. Most prevalent among these flaws is an apparent assumption that successful outcomes were the result of a sound decision-making approach and the correction of the organization’s past decision-making shortfalls; not the result, in part or whole, of good fortune or luck. (Note that Thomas and Brook did examine some failed decisions of examined organizations, however, we found those reviews to be incomplete when compared with StrategyDriven‘s analysis.) We would have liked to have seen additional testing whereby the processes leading to successful decisions were tested against decision-making shortcomings observed in other organizations. In our experience, organizations may experience a series of successful decision outcomes because circumstances that would otherwise challenge their area of vulnerability are not manifest. When such a circumstance does arise, the organization’s decision process fails to recognize or appropriately deal with it leading to an adverse outcome.

StrategyDriven Contributors have studied high-risk decisions – both the successes and the failures – made by organizations such as NASA and nuclear utilities around the world; identifying principles and practices to be embraced and those to be avoided. Indeed, one of our contributors co-authored the standards by which the U.S. nuclear industry processes its high-risk decisions. While we agree with the four organizational factors associated with successful decision-making as outlined in Judgment Calls, we believe there are many others demanding close attention in order to consistently achieve desired outcomes. Our insights to high-risk decision management can be found in StrategyDriven’s Decision-Making topic area.

While we believe the approach taken to draw the conclusions contained within Judgment Calls to be flaw, the book offers otherwise inaccessible insight into the decision-making processes of respected organizations making it a StrategyDriven recommended read.

Recommended Resource – The Leader Phrase Book

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The Leader Phrase Book: 3000+ Powerful Phrases That Put You In Command

by Patrick Alain

About the Reference

The Leader Phrase Book by Patrick Alain provides professionals with the ‘right thing to say’ across a multitude of situations and spectrum of approaches. These phrases can help anyone prepare for interactions of all kinds with seniors, peers, and subordinates. A small sample of the situations covered include:

  • General Conversation – How to Agree, How to Disagree
  • At Work – How to Ask for a Raise, How to Ask for Time Off
  • Conflicts and Anger – How to Diffuse a Tense Situation, How to Stop a Conflict Between Other People
  • Diplomacy – How to Open Up a Topic for Debate, How to Wrap Up a Debate
  • Negotiation – How to Ask a Question, How to Stall
  • Problem Solving – How to Address/Acknowledge a Problem, How to Ask Someone for Help
  • Courtesy – How to Offer Your Help, When Someone Asks You for Help
  • Machiavellian Techniques – How to Destabilize Someone, How to Threaten Someone

Benefits of Using this Reference

StrategyDriven Contributors like The Leader Phrase Book because of its broad situational applicability and immediately implementable recommendations. This book helps new and experienced professionals build out their communications toolkit with approaches that will help them gracefully navigate difficult situations. Whether one desires to be formal or casual, courteous or rude, The Leader Phrase Book can be used to prepare for difficult conversations and, with practice, its phrases will become second nature; enabling the professional to adapt ‘on-the-fly’ when challenging circumstances arise. For its quality and actionable insights, The Leader Phrase Book is a StrategyDriven recommended read.

Knowing Your Value

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Knowing Your Value Women, Money, and Getting What You’re Worth
by Mika Brzezinski

About the Reference

Knowing Your Value by Mika Brzezinski is a self confession and personal growth story about how a now prominent MSNBC morning show host discovered, demanded, and won compensation more inline with that of her peers. The story is complimented by the personal value stories and insights of over a dozen other leaders.

Why You Should Not Buy This Book

StrategyDriven Contributors dislike Knowing Your Value for several reasons. First, the book lacks sufficient method for actually determining your personal worth to an organization. Its premise is that an individual’s value contribution should be based on the compensation of others in similar positions. The shortfall with this argument is that each unique individual contributes differently to the organization and so offers his/her own value proposition. Additionally, there is an underlying assumption that the comparison employees have accurately identified and won their value – a premise that is often not true. Second, the book maintains a foundational assumption that the author was treated differently because she is a woman. While this may or may not be true, the comparison employees identified were noted as contributing significantly greater intellectual and creative works to their organization; suggesting that they were rightfully compensated more. Brzezinski discounts the fact that men, minorities, and other classes of people may also be undervalued, for the reasons she presents, and that everyone should methodically seek to identify and demand their value from employers.

For its shortfalls in revealing how to calculate one’s personal value contribution and its faulted underlying logic and assumptions, StrategyDriven Contributors recommend that our readers not purchase or invest time reading Knowing Your Value.

Alternative Recommendation

StrategyDriven Contributors believe it is highly important for an individual to know his/her value and to aggressively seek it. Identifying one’s worth is not a matter of simple comparison with others or a fight against perceived discrimination but rather a deliberate methodological evaluation of the value contribution of the individual to the organization followed by the positive assertion of that value to those who can correct any imbalance. Such a methodology is presented by Larry Myler, Chief Executive Officer of By Monday, in his book, Indispensable By Monday: Learn the Profit-Producing Behaviors that will Help Your Company and Yourself.

Click here to read a review of Indispensable By Monday and listen to our StrategyDriven Podcast interview with Larry Myler on determining your organizational value.

Recommended Resource – Advocacy

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Advocacy: Championing Ideas and Influencing Others
by John Daly

About the Reference

Advocacy by John Daly provides actionable methods to effectively market ideas such that they are acted upon by the organization. Too often, worthwhile initiatives are pushed aside because they do not receive the critical level of support needed to move forward – merit and positive cost-benefit alone are not typically enough to ‘sell’ an idea. Rather, reputation, relationships, timing, and persuasive messaging is needed to garner the attention and buy-in necessary to gain action on one’s proposals.

In Advocacy, John reveals a step-by-step framework of activities to build the critical mass intangibles needed to drive organizational action. These immediately implementable actions are supported by highly illustrative examples and tools/templates – everything needed to create and execute a plan to get action on one’s next proposal.

Benefits of Using this Reference

StrategyDriven Contributors like Advocacy because of its immediately implementable methods for effectively dealing with the organizational politics common to all businesses. While meritorious competition between initiatives tends to best serve the organization, reality dictates that politics, power struggles, and positioning often hinder the progression of top ideas in favor of less deserving ones. Thus, Advocacy provides the crucial real-world tools every leader should practice when putting forward proposals; thereby ensuring more equitable treatment of the body of ideas being considered.

If we had one criticism of Advocacy it would be that John’s examples are a bit too numerous and a bit too long. While we believe the illustrations could be more concise, it is usually better to have too much than too little detail and the extra here is not a significant distraction.

Effectively dealing with office politics, power struggles, and positioning is a matter of life in today’s business world. Advocacy‘s positive promotional methods provide a comprehensive, actionable way of dealing with these influencers with the goal of benefiting the organization; making it a StrategyDriven recommended read.

Recommended Resource – Built to Sell

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Built to Sell: Creating a Business That Can Thrive Without You
by John Warrillow

About the Reference

Built to Sell by John Warrillow highlights the many factors preventing business owners from successfully transitioning away from their companies and how to resolve this situation. All too often, business founders embed themselves within the operational fabric of the company they create; setting it up for failure upon they departure. In his business novel, John defines the business characteristics and operating environment owners must establish in order to later remove themselves from the organization without its subsequent collapse. These include:

  • offering products and services employees or technologies can deliver in the owner’s absence
  • specializing in doing one thing better than anyone else
  • creating a stream of recurring revenue because customers need to repurchase often

Benefits of Using this Reference

StrategyDriven Contributors like Built to Sell because of its actionable insights presented in a easy-to-consume business novel format. Furthermore, we believe John’s principles of creating a successful business apply to enterprises of all sizes, whether public or private.

StrategyDriven Contributors have long warned against the practice of employing ‘working managers.’ (See StrategyDriven Warning Flag – Working Managers.) We feel management is the work of managers and that to focus on other tasks, particularly those that should be performed by subordinates, dilutes the manager’s ability to effectively manage; diminishing overall organizational performance and doing a disservice to both the manager and his/her staff. John’s book, Built to Sell, presents in principle the actions necessary for every manager to remove him/herself from the day-to-day work of the business so to allow him/her to manage. Subsequently, the manager can be replaced. In John’s book, the owner-manager can sell and transition away from the company without its failing. In a corporate setting, the manager can transition via promotion/transfer and the remaining organization continue to operate successfully.

We believe the principles presented in Built to Sell are broadly applicable and the book to be an invaluable read for managers at every organizational level. For its quality and actionable insights, Built to Sell is a StrategyDriven recommended read.