Decision Analysis for Managers: A Guide for Making Better Personal and Business Decisions, Second Edition

  • 2h 12m
  • David Charlesworth
  • Business Expert Press
  • 2017

Everybody has to make decisions-they are unavoidable. However, we receive little or no education or training on how to make decisions. Business decisions are difficult: which people to hire, which product lines or facilities to expand, which proposal to accept, how much R&D to invest in, which environmental projects are high priority, etc. Personal decisions (college, getting married, changing jobs, buying a house, retiring, dealing with a health problem) can be even more difficult. This book gives you the tools you need to clarify and reach alignment on goals and objectives; Understand trade-offs associated with reaching those objectives; Develop and examine alternatives; Systematically analyze the effects of risk and uncertainty, and; Maximize the chances of achieving your goals. Success (getting what you want) depends on luck and good decision-making. You can't control your luck, but you can maximize your odds by making the best possible decisions, and this book gets you there. The author organizes and presents otherwise formal decision-making tools in an intuitively understandable fashion. The presentation is informal, but the concepts and tools are research-based and formally accepted. Whether you are a business owner, a manager or team leader, or a senior professional, these tools will help both your personal and your business life.

In this Book

  • What is Decision Analysis?: And Why Should I Care?
  • How to Start Framing a DA Problem: How Can We Work Together?
  • The Objectives Hierarchy: What Do We Want?
  • Decisions and Alternatives: What Can We Do?
  • Influence Diagrams: What Do We Know?
  • Uncertainty Assessment: The Boundary between Known and Unknown
  • Building a Deterministic Model: Time to Run the Numbers
  • Tornado Diagrams: Figuring Out What is Important
  • Cumulative Probability: Looking at the Range of Outcomes
  • Value of Information: How Much Is It Worth to Know?
  • Multiattribute Decision Analysis: There's More to Life than Money
  • Decision Quality: How Well Have We Done?
  • Risk Analysis: I Want It Cheap and I Want It Now
  • Other Topics: More Things to Think About
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