P r e f a c e
Welcome to the start of an exciting journey—a journey not in place and time, but into the complex cognitive processes of making decisions. It’s an important human endeavor, as well as an essential business skill. You have already made dozens to hundreds of decisions since you woke up this morning, so the journey is one that you’ve made many times. As you use this book, however, I ask that you take a fresh look, not at where you have arrived (the final decision or solution), but how you got there. It’s fascinating. If you have never before taken something apart to see how it works, then you’re in for a treat. I was sent to my room many times for such activities as a child, but I learned a lot.
Purpose of This Training Program
This book is designed for individuals who need to develop a training program to help others in the processes of decision making. Those activities can be quite complex, but using different kinds of “tools” can help a person approach them more easily and more effectively. In recent years, there has been a tendency for college courses and business seminars on this subject to become over-systematized. Graduate programs in management science, especially, have espoused elaborate procedures requiring an in-depth background in statistics, as well as sophisticated models into which massive amounts of data must be entered. Management science does have its place; however, most business and personal decisions simply don’t require all of this.
Typical managers, entrepreneurs, and employees can make nearly all the decisions and solve most of the problems they face by just using a few simple concepts. Seldom is it necessary to deal with primary research or economic forecasting projections. Your trainees may just need to do things like figure inventory requirements or staffing needs for their department or make dozens of other routine decisions that we face on a day-to-day basis. Sophisticated models would, for these purposes, probably be inefficient and just get in the way.
This book and training program offers a “Back to Basics” training approach to decision making that is appropriate for all but upper-level managers in large organizations, and even for them at times. It will help you design a training program that can be of real, practical value on the job. Your trainees need not be experts in statistics or business theory. Some of the concepts they’ll learn apply to any aspect of life; others only apply to certain kinds of business problems or decisions.
Acknowledgments
During the preparation of this Trainer’s WorkShop package, I have relied significantly on two of my previous publications. The first two sections of this book include excerpts and ideas from The Professional Trainer, published in the second edition in 2005 by Berrett-Koehler. The decision-making ideas and presentations in section four are distilled from Decision Making and Problem Solving in Management, published in its third edition in 2007 by Crown Custom Publishing.
I especially appreciate the support of my colleagues and my wife, Susan, in the creation of this project. Thanks, also, to Roger Williams, a friend and former business partner who was responsible for moving both previous books into a much wider market. Mark Morrow, former acquisitions editor for ASTD Press, was quite gracious and helpful in this endeavor—as were all the ASTD staff with whom I’ve worked over the years. One does not create a book like this without the help of many individuals. Some of them are listed on the copyright page (page ii). Most of my direct communications were with Justin Brusino, Carol Field, and Robin Bonner, although I know many others were involved. In this age of emails, FTPs, and other distance communication, an author can be surprisingly dependent on persons he or she has never met face to face. Thanks to all of them. Finally, I particularly appreciate the constructive comments from many of my former students and seminar participants, who have helped me define the needs of their organizations to improve decision making and problem solving.
Robert H. Vaughn, PhD
Arvon Management Services
January 2010