The Right Decision Every Time : How to Reach Perfect Clarity on Tough Decisions

Luda Kopeikina

Retail Price: $29.99 LS Price: $22.49 You Save: $7.50 (25%) Availability: Usually ships within 48 hours Format: Paperback, 288pp. ISBN: 9780768682045 Publisher: Prentice Hall Pub. Date: September 1, 2005 Average Customer Review:

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Gain unprecedented clarity in all your decision-making, so you can make consistently better decisions-and make them more rapidly. Drawing on her breakthrough research at MIT with 115 CEOs, Luda Kopeikina offers practical, proven techniques for structuring decisions, achieving clarity about the real issues, and using that clarity to improve every decision you make.

Using Kopeikina's approach, a stunning 93 percent of CEOs made clear strategic decisions within 90 minutes or less-even when these decisions had been sitting unresolved for weeks or months. You can be every bit as effective.

• Lightning strikes: reaching clarity fast, when it matters most Focus all your physical, mental and emotional resources on your decision
• Conquering the obstacles to timely decision-making
  Overcome the 5 reasons executives fail to decide
• Clarity of objective: Defining your decision
  Know exactly what you're trying to accomplish
• Emotions and reason: you need them both
  Don't just acknowledge your emotions: use them to your advantage
• Clarity of perspective: finding the right decision "frame"
  Identify the right context for your decision
• Decision de-layering: peeling away complexity
  Simplify complex decisions by working through each individual element

Reviews

"Yes, it's time to decide which management book to read next. To help you decide, I have read Luda Kopeikina's The Right Decision Every Time and now I can muster better emotional resources, overcome procrastination, clearly set objectives, apply reason, establish context, and de-layer complexity. I can now clearly recommend that THIS be the next management book that you read. Kopeikina offers many insights into how to make the best decisions, but the ones I appreciate most reveal how to free your mind and body from their—yikes—'death habits.' Kopeikina also recommends clarity of communication as a test of decisions, and she shows us how on every page of her fine book."

—Dr. Robert M. Metcalfe, MIT engineer, Ethernet inventor, 3Com founder, InfoWorld pundit, and now Polaris Ventures partner; Recipient in 2005 of the National Medal of Technology—the nation's highest award for technological innovation

"The Right Decision Every Time offers sound and practical advice for resolving complex decision situations. By considering any decision in a clear state of mind, we find fundamental barriers, test core assumptions, and align with the right choice. Ideas presented in this book can make a profound difference in any manager's effectiveness."

—C. Michael Armstrong, Retired Chairman, Comcast—AT&T—Hughes

"In her book, The Right Decision Every Time, Luda Kopeikina provides a unique and enlightening look into the process of decision making utilizing a Clarity State—a state of emotional, mental, and physical balance. This book is a 'must-read' for any manager or entrepreneur that strives to be the most effective leader they can be."

—Marshall Carter, Retired Chairman and CEO, State Street Bank and Trust

"Effective leaders communicate clear strategies. To communicate strategy clearly, they must be clear themselves. The Right Decision Every Time presents simple but powerful techniques that even mature leaders have repeatedly shown they can add to their arsenal, helping them excel in leadership. The Clarity State integrates many difficult techniques in a very practical, proven process. Everyone who aspires to successfully lead their organizations, large or small, private or public, should learn the process Luda presents in this book."

—James L. Ritchie-Dunham, Ph.D., President, The Institute for Strategic Clarity; Associate at Harvard University Psychology Department; Co-author of Managing from Clarity: Identifying, Aligning, and Leveraging Strategic Resources

Luda Kopeikina is a Visiting Scholar at the MIT Sloan School of Management and CEO of Noventra Corporation, an innovation commercialization firm. Ms. Kopeikina spent six years at General Electric in various vice presidential positions, where she had an opportunity to work with Jack Welch and observe his methods in action. Later, she was President and CEO of Celerity Solutions, Inc., a publicly traded company. Under her leadership, the company executed a complete turnaround in two years and grew six-fold. Interactive Week's 1998 Executive Worth Survey ranked Ms. Kopeikina within the top 20 CEOs of U.S. high-tech public companies for her performance and total return to shareholders.

Ms. Kopeikina is an entrepreneur who started two successful companies. She enjoys working with entrepreneurs and helping businesses prosper. She is a Chairman of MIT Enterprise Forum of South Florida, a nonprofit organization that promotes entrepreneurship. She also serves on the Board of Directors of several companies.

Ms. Kopeikina holds a master's degree from MIT's Sloan School of Management as a Sloan Fellow. She also holds a master's degree in computer science from St. Petersburg University, Russia, where she completed a Ph.D. thesis in computer science.

	Introduction	vi
1	The Key to Mastering Decisions	1
2	The Clarity State-Mental Focus Redefined	15
3	Five Hurdles to Clarity	23
4	How Do You Make Decisions? Overview of a CEO-Tested Process	43
5	You Too Can Reach Clarity at Will!-How to Attain the Clarity State	61
6	No Aim, No Game-How to Achieve Clarity of Objective	77
7	Escaping Handcuffs-How to Achieve Clarity of Constraints	93
8	Balancing Mind and Body-How to Learn from Your Emotional Cues	117
9	Pick a Fight!-How to Get the Most Out of Clashing Opinions	139
10	Everything Is Relative! - Why the Right Frame Is Critical	159
11	Becoming a Frame Artist-How to Master Clarity of Perspective	171
12	Bull's-eye!-How to Align with the Right Outcome	173
13	Voilà! - How to Put It All Together	197
	Appendix A. Clarity State Decision-Making Technique-A Summary	237
	Appendix B. Additional Tips on Reducing Decision Complexity	243
	References	257
	Index	265

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