How the Wise Decide: The Lessons of 21 Extraordinary Leaders

How the Wise Decide is akin to sitting down for a mentoring session with some of the great leaders of recent years. Its commonsense lessons on decision-making, clear writing, and practical guidelines make it a wise choice for both people just starting their careers as well as those with years of experience under their belt.

--Frank Blake, chairman and CEO, Home Depot

Bryn Zeckhauser and Aaron Sandoski offer a rich collection of insights on how leaders make and implement important decisions, distilled from an impressively wide range of major decision-makers. The discussion of risk, risk mitigation, and incentives is particularly useful. The importance of transparency and its relation to self-selection is very interesting. And the commentary on the no-carryover principle and the pocket veto is just fascinating.

--A. Michael Spence, former dean, Stanford Graduate School of Business, and winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics

What is wisdom? How is it acquired? Can it be codified? Can it be learned? Bryn Zeckhauser and Aaron Sandoski have attacked these questions head-on by focusing on how twenty-one remarkable leaders make decisions. They discern some fascinating patterns, which form the basis for concrete and practical advice. Zeckhauser and Sandoski have done us a great service by picking these people to study and helping us learn from them. Every reader can benefit from reading How the Wise Decide since we all can certainly use a dose of wisdom.

--William A. Sahlman, Dimitri V. d'Arbeloff- MBA Class of 1955 Professor of Business Administration, Harvard Business School

How the Wise Decide thoughtfully examines principles that inform effective decision-making and shows how successful leaders have used them to make critical decisions. In a series of interesting and well-researched lessons, Bryn Zeckhauser and Aaron Sandoski offer practical advice and a method that all managers can use to improve their decision-making.

--Roger W. Ferguson Jr., president and CEO, TIAA-CREF

The most difficult dilemma in business is how to make the tough decisions. How the Wise Decide provides compelling examples from our greatest leaders as to how they source information, deal with risk, and let their long-term vision guide them in making the tough calls. For anyone who wants to be a wise decision-maker, the first choice should be to buy this book.

--Sarah Levy, COO, Nickelodeon

From the Hardcover edition.

Chapter 1

Go to the Source

Remember the game you played in kindergarten in which the class, one by one, passed on a whispered statement? When the last child told out loud what she had heard, it was nothing like what the first kid had whisper

Draws on interviews with twenty of the world's most distinguished leaders in the fields of business, politics, science, and more to reveal how they make decisions under pressure and furnishes practical decision-making strategies for leaders at any level of an organization. 50,000 first printing.

BRYN ZECKHAUSER is a senior fellow at Harvard University’s Mossaver-Rahmani Center for Business and Government and a principal at Equity Resource Investments, a real-estate investment firm with funds in the United States and Asia. She developed her interest in strategic decision making working with portfolio companies at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and with her Fortune 500 clients at McKinsey and Company.

AARON SANDOSKI is managing director of Norwich Ventures, a medical device venture capital firm. He began his professional career with the consulting firm McKinsey & Company and has also been a teaching fellow at Harvard University, where he won the Allyn Young Teaching Prize.

Go to the source — Fill a room with barbarians — Conquer the fear of risk — Make vision your daily guide — Listen with purpose — Be transparent