Strategic Decision Making & Critical Reasoning

TBD ($2500)
Instructor: Vikas Mittal, Ph.D. (Rice University)

Are you a good decision maker? A recent 2008 study of global firms by McKinsey concluded: “Individual and group psychology can cause irrational decision making by both individuals and organizations, resulting in less than ideal outcomes. Even the best-designed strategic planning processes don’t always lead to optimal decisions.” Improved technical mastery of a discipline (e.g., finance, engineering, geology, etc.) does not improve your competence in strategic decision making. However, career success is intricately linked to competence in strategic decision making.

“Strategic Decision Making & Critical Reasoning” is a leadership program designed to enhance your ability to understand your decision-making process and enhance your strategic decision-making skills in your personal and professional life. 

Course objectives:

• Enhance your capability to frame, structure, and analyze decision opportunities from a strategic point of view
• Sensitize you to the business and behavioral aspects of the decision process
  • Confirmation bias, loss aversion, emotional intelligence, availability heuristic, sunk-cost, etc.
   
• Help you to examine and address the different issues in influencing and motivating people for successful decision implementation
• Group think, common information bias, functional bias, listening impairment
• Develop your decision skills through in-depth coaching of a decision in which you are currently involved
• NOTE: This course is not a tutorial in decision tools or techniques.

Course Methods:

This interactive leadership-learning program does not use “lecture and listen” format. We use:

• Interactive discussions and analysis of personal and professional decisions (successful and unsuccessful) made by you and others. Examples include:
  • President Kennedy’s Bay of Pigs decision
  • NASA’s Challenger launch
  • Family decision for a vacation
  • Launching a new product
  • Solyndra’s decision to take the US government loan
  • Your job/career decisions
   

• In-group exercises, cases, and role plays designed to assess and improve your:
  • Listening skills
  • Emotional intelligence quotient
  • Risk-taking sensitivity (differential sensitivity to losses or gains)
  • Ability to create an open environment in a team/group that minimizes emotional conflict even while encouraging task-related disagreements
  • Skills in accepting and voicing disagreement by minimizing confirmation bias
   

Participant Profile:

The course is suitable for people who have a minimum of 2 years experience in supervisory or leadership capacity such as

• Managing and supervising people
• Working in or leading a cross-functional team
• Being a group or project leader
• Participation in a cross-functional team/project