The Art of Critical Decision Making

By: Michael A. Roberto, The Great Courses

Narrated by: Michael A. Roberto

Length: 12 hrs and 22 mins

Publisher's summary

Learn to approach the critical decisions in your life with a more seasoned, educated eye with this fascinating 24-lecture series that explores how individuals, groups, and organizations make effective decisions. The heart of this accessible series is a thorough examination of decision making at three key levels. First, you'll look at decisions made at the individual level, where, among the many things you'll learn is that intuition is more than just a gut instinct and, in fact, represents a powerful pattern recognition capability. Then, you'll explore decisions made at the group level, where you'll try to answer the question of whether groups are "smarter" and more capable of making critical decisions than individuals. And finally, you'll pull back to analyze organizational decision making, in which Professor Roberto demonstrates how some organizations have encouraged and reliably performed vigilant decision making in the face of risky scenarios.

Whether you're the head of a Fortune 500 company, a government agency, or an everyday household, you constantly make decisions important to you and those immediately around you. These lectures offer you a toolbox of practical knowledge and skills that you can apply to various decisions - whether large or small - in your everyday life and work. Professor Roberto's lively lectures are packed with useful anecdotes, tools, and advice designed to improve your own ability to make informed decisions. As you explore the intriguing process of making a good decision, you'll strengthen your grip on individual theories of decision making and the situations that illustrate them.

PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying reference material will be available in your Library section along with the audio.

©2009 The Teaching Company, LLC (P)2009 The Great Courses

awesome!

This should be required reading for anyone in a leadership position. A lot of the stuff covered in this had me shouting "Thats what I've been saying!" It was a validation on views that Ive held and espoused.

very good

excellent overview of sound strategic management techniques with several excellent historical examples. Very highly recommended

great for business

well done and very useful in life and in a company. I will use these skills for the rest of my life.

Fantastic!

Excellent lecture series. The case study method he employs is smart and effective. Premium lecture content from a superb lecturer.

So-so

I had hoped to gain valuable information to help me improve the speed and confidence with which I make decisions. Instead, this seems to be a lot of historical decisions on why organizations or groups of people sometimes make the decisions they do. It's not bad, I suppose, but not terribly useful.

Brilliant!

Wow, the first two chapters alone made the purchase worthwhile. I can't get past the pivotal lesson in chapter two, "Deciding on how you actually make decisions."

In the past, I made decisions I was called on to make... but never reflected on the decisions I made, consciously or unconsciously, that were influencing the decision-making process.

24 brilliant lessons, 24 moments of insight and understanding. This was a very valuable listen.

Nucular

I enjoyed all of the content but it was so hard to stay focused every time he said "nucular". I'd spend 2 minutes distracted by my thoughts on this common mispronunciation and then have to rewind and try again.

my favorite specific the focus course from GC

This is an excellent series of lectures and decision-making covering individual human cognitive biases group dynamics and organizational Dynamics. I highly recommended to anybody interested in these topics.

One of my favs in the series.

I just loved every minute of this lecture series. I've listened to a few The Great Courses series of lectures and while they are all excellent I found this one really special.

Great story telling using the case method of teaching and just a so much fascinating insight that I was able to apply directly to my daily life. I'm re-listening to take more detailed notes it was so good.

Anyone in management looking to understand better ways to navigate better strategy and execution will love this. Also a lot of attention played to Lean principles which is something I am pretty passionate about.

I did listen at 1.25x the speed as I feel the lectures always talk to slow but this is more personal. Even at this speed things sound very natural and the pace is great.

this is a series of lectures and not a book per se

this is a series of lectures and not a book per se. three extra words.