Think Again: Why Good Leaders Make Bad Decisions and How to Keep it From Happeining to You

Sydney Finkelstein, Jo Whitehead and Andrew Campbell

Retail Price: $27.95 LS Price: $19.00 You Save: $8.95 (32%) Availability: Usually ships within 24 hours Format: Hardcover, 256pp. ISBN: 9781422126127 Publisher: Harvard Business School Press Pub. Date: February 3, 2009 Average Customer Review:

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Why do smart and experienced leaders make flawed, even catastrophic, decisions? Why do people keep believing they have made the right choice, even with the disastrous result staring them in the face? And how can you be sure you're making the right decision--without the benefit of hindsight?

Sydney Finkelstein, Jo Whitehead, and Andrew Campbell show how the usually beneficial processes of the human mind can become traps when we face big decisions. The authors show how the shortcuts our brains have learned to take over millennia of evolution can derail our decision making. Think Again offers a powerful model for making better decisions, describing the key red flags to watch for and detailing the decision-making safeguards we need.

Using examples from business, politics, and history, Think Again deconstructs bad decisions, as they unfolded in real time, to show how you can avoid the same fate.

Jo Whitehead and Andrew Campbell direct the Strategic Management Centre at Ashridge Business School. Sydney Finkelstein, the author of Why Smart Executives Fail, is a professor at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth, and regularly lectures on leadership and why leaders fail.

	Part 1: How Your Brain Makes Decisions	1
	In the Eye of the Storm	3
	Pattern Recognition	15
	Emotional Tagging	31
	One Plan at a Time	55
	Part 2: Why Decisions Go Wrong	73
	Misleading Experiences	75
	Misleading Prejudgments	89
	Inappropriate Self-Interest	107
	Inappropriate Attachments	129
	Part 3: Red Flags and Safeguards	155
	Reducing Risks with Safeguards	157
	Selecting Safeguards	179
	Leaders Make Good Decisions	199
	App. I Database of Cases	205
	App. II Database of Safeguards	211
	Notes	219
	Index	231

Think Better: An Innovator's Guide to Productive Thinking
Why Smart Executives Fail: And What You Can Learn from Their Mistakes