The confident decision maker : how to make the right business and personal decisions every time

236 Pages·1993·103.293 MB·English

by  Roger Dawson

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The
Confident
Decision
Maker·
How to Make the Right Business
and Personal Decisions Every Time
Roger Dawson
\\
William Morrow and Company,Inc.
NewYork
Copyright © 1993 by Nightingale-Conant Corporation and Roger Dawson
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized inany form orby
any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any
information storage orretrieval system, without permission inwriting from the Publisher.
Inquiries should beaddressed toPermissions Department, William Morrow andCompany,
Inc., 1350 Avenue of the Americas, New York, N.Y. 10019.
It is the policy of William Morrow and Company, Inc., and its imprints and affiliates,
recognizing the importance of preserving what has been written, to print the books we
publish on acid-free paper, and we exert our best efforts to that end.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Dawson, Roger.
The confident decision maker: how to make the right business and
personal decisions every time / Roger Dawson.
p. cm.
ISBN 0-688-11564-0
(b
Decision-making-c-Uaited-States+ I. Title.
HD30.23.D373 1993
658.4'03-dc20 92-21364
CIP
Printed in the United States of America
First Edition
2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
BOOK DESIGN BY BARBARA COHEN
Dedicated to:
Goody. Marrying you was the smartest decision I ever made.
Julia, Dwight, and John. Thanks for believing in me.
Mike Willbond and Jill Schacter. Who first approached me
about this project.
Sue Telingator. Who worked so hard and added so much.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER ONE 11
The Qualities of a Good Decision Maker
CHAPTER TWO 28
Categorizing the Decision
CHAPTER THREE 47
Blueprinting the Decision
CHAPTER FOUR 68
Intuitive Decision Making
CHAPTER FIVE 87
Developing Rapid Reasoning
CHAPTER SIX 108
Expanding Your Options
CHAPTER SEVEN 130
Logical Decision Making
CHAPTER EIGHT 153
Reaction Tables and Decision Trees
CHAPTER NINE 178
Huddling
CHAPTER TEN 205
Barriers to Confident Decisions
CHAPTER ELEVEN 227
Styles of Decision Making
CHAPTER TWELVE 249
The Nine Traits of Great Decision Makers
The 21-Day Plan for Confident Decision Makers 276
7
CHAPTER ONE
The Qualities of a
Good Decision Maker
James Michael Goldsmith, a millionaire living in Paris in the late
1950s, had everything going for him-he was the head of a
successful pharmaceuticals company, Laboratoires Cassene,
which in the three years since its inception had become one of
France's greatest success stories; he had eloped with the beautiful
heiress to a $75 million fortune; and he was only twenty-four
years old. A romance novelist couldn't have dreamed of a more
amazing character.
But on the morning of July 10, 1957, everything was about
to change. Because of some tough and extraordinary. decisions
James Goldsmith had made, he was on the brink of financial and
personal ruin. And without a stroke of luck, coincidence, and
some fast thinking, Goldsmith might have been just another go-
getter who burned out too fast, too young.
From the time Goldsmith started hiscompany, itexpanded at
an enormously rapid pace. He bought the rights to sell American
pharmaceutical products in France. This was a smart decision-
his business grew, and soon he was grossing nearly $3 million a
year. Coasting on his good fortune, he commissioned a new
property to be built for warehousing pharmaceuticals and re-
searching new drugs. Yet, as with many young entrepreneurs
11
12 THE CONFIDENT DECISION MAKER
who run on the adrenaline of their newfound success, his dreams
had grown larger than his bank account.
By the spring of 1957, sales had plummeted. Burdened with
the financial and personal pressures of his situation, Goldsmith
made a deal with two Italian backers who agreed to buy a 50
percent share of the company. But after three weeks, the backers
changed their minds and asked for an 80 percent share for the
same money. Goldsmith was dumbfounded. The prospect of giv-
ing over that much control of a company he had personally
founded was too upsetting. He made adecision based on principle
and an enormous amount of confidence-the same confidence
that had made him successful in the first place. He refused the
deal.
It took a lot of courage for Goldsmith to make his decision.
Unfortunately, it seemed the consequences were dismal. By the
first week in July, bankruptcy was staring the twenty-four-year-
old boy wonder in the face. On the last possible day before his
financial ruin, when all his creditors would find out that he
couldn't possibly pay them, James Goldsmith went to the comer
to buy a newspaper. He expected the headlines to report the
demise of Laboratoires Cassene. Instead, they headlined a bank
strike that would cripple all of France for at least the next week.
It was a dramatic reprieve for Goldsmith. His creditors couldn't
collect because the banks were closed; it was all the time this
fast-thinker needed to turn his luck around.
The very next morning hewas onthephone with hiscompeti-
tion, Laboratoires Roussel. By the end of the month, he had
managed to sell practically everything, with the exception of the
royalties to one pharmaceutical product from which he could
support his family. He made over $250,000 (a substantial sum in
the 1950s) from the sale and spent the next two months in Spain,
recuperating.
Today, young Jimmy Goldsmith is SirJames Goldsmith, the
billionaire owner of a huge conglomerate and a master decision
THE QUALITIES OF A GOOD DECISION MAKER 13
maker who has continually relied on his intuitive ability-for
better or for worse.
Decisions Are the Building Blocks of Life.
How important are the decisions we make? As you can see from
the story ofJames Goldsmith, decisions have the power to change
your life forever. Some decisions are good, some brilliant, some
bad, and some just plain disastrous. Of course, we're conscious
of the major decisions we make in our lives because they cause
us the most stress. But the major decisions aren't the only ones
that affect our future. We make decisions ahundred times a day,
and nothing affects our lives more than our ability to make the
right decisions. All that you have achieved and all that you have
failed to accomplish can be traced to the decisions you've made.
More important, all that lies ahead of you-all your hopes,
dreams, and goals-depend on your ability to make wise deci-
SIOns.
Yet the strange thing is, nobody seems to know how to make
the best decisions. In my career as a full-time speaker, I travel
ten months a year around the country, conducting seminars for
corporations and associations. Whenever my schedule permits, I
like to have dinner the night before my seminar with the president
of the company I'll be addressing, or the top performer in an
association, and pick his brains about what made him so success-
ful. As Ibecame more immersed in the topic of decision making,
I started focusing my questions on how these successful people
made the right decisions. What process did they use? Did they
incorporate the opinions of others in their company?
What I found was absolutely fascinating. Almost nobody
knows how he or she makes decisions. I spoke with people who
built empires and people who dominated their industry. If their
market penetration got any better, they'd be a monopoly. These
14 THE CONFIDENT DECISION MAKER
are people who commit $10 million to a project without losing a
moment's sleep. Yet in reply to my questions, they just stam-
mered and stuttered. "We don't have away we make decisions,"
they'd say. "Something comes up, we kick it around, and if it
feels right and we can afford it, we make a move." Isn't that
astounding? I wondered how much better they could be at what
they do ifthey would just get alittle bit better atdecision making.
How's your decision-making track record? Ifyou don't think
it's very good, you're not alone. A survey by the American
Management Association determined that businesspeople only
make the right decision 50 percent of the time. Doesn't that say
something about the strength of our economy? Businesses that
can remain successful even though half the time they are making
the wrong decisions are especially impressive. But to me, making
the right decision only half of the time is a cop-out. It brings
down the acceptable standard of performance in industry.
Separating the Decision from the
Decision-Making Process
There's a better way to make decisions, and in the next few
chapters I'm going to show you how you can consistently make
the smartest decisions possible. The starting point is to change
the way you think about decision making. To become a better
decision maker, you have to stop focusing on the decision itself
and concentrate on the decision-making process. Once you rely
on the process, you will have the confidence that you're making
the best choice every time.
For example, consider the following three scenarios. All
three concern people making personal decisions that could change
the direction of their lives. All three were at a loss as to how to
make the best decision for themselves. In the first instance, aman
from Italy wrote me that he wanted to move to California. He
THE QUALITIES OF A GOOD DECISION MAKER 15
had abusiness opportunity waiting there and felt he could be very
successful. However, it would mean leaving his wife and two
young daughters behind for at least five years. Should he go?
In another situation, a woman phoned me from San Fran-
cisco to tell me that her husband transferred to San Diego. He'd
be there for at least a year and possibly longer. Then they would
promote him again and probably transfer him back to the head
office in the San Francisco Bay area. She couldn't decide whether
to go through the trauma of selling their home and moving to San
Diego, or stay and wait for him to come back. Could I help her
choose?
In the third case, a young man approached me at a seminar.
He said he and a business acquaintance wanted to start their own
printing business, but he hadn't known the man very long and
wasn't sure if he trusted him. He wanted to know how to assess
such a decision. Should he trust this man?
How would you have advised these people? When I looked
at their situations more carefully, I realized that in each scenario,
an important decision-making technique was necessary to make
the best possible choice. In the instance of the man from Italy who
wanted to move to California, he needed the skill to categorize his
decision correctly. Instead of making it an either/or proposition,
he needed to look for deeper answers that involved some creative
thinking. I told him that he'd be crazy to leave his family for five
years. He'd miss the chance of seeing his two young daughters
grow up and mature into young women. Instead of worrying
about whether he should or shouldn't leave his family behind, I
told him toconcentrate onfiguring out away tomove toCalifornia
and bring his family with him.
As for the dilemma of the woman from San Francisco, I
simply told her to take the next plane to San Diego if she cared
anything about her marriage. She wasn't thinking through the
consequences of her actions. If she let her husband play bachelor
for a whole year, there was a chance it could destroy their mar-
16 THE CONFIDENT DECISION MAKER
riage. Using logical decision-making techniques would have
shown her that she had everything to lose and nothing to gain.
Finally, concerning the young man at the seminar who
wanted to know if he should go into business with an acquain-
tance, I told him that going into business for himself was a great
idea if he had a burning desire to do it, but not with this person.
His problem was that he had clouded two decisions into one
decision. Being self-employed and creating something from the
ground up can be extremely fulfilling, but if his instincts were
telling him that his acquaintance couldn't be trusted, he should
listen to those doubts. When he found the right person, I told
him, nothing would hold him back, and he probably wouldn't
ask a complete stranger for advice.
The Consequences of Decision Making
In each of these instances, you can see how the inability to make
decisions leads us to a standstill. It impedes our faculty to think
clearly and to understand our true feelings. And most of all, it
frustrates our capacity to better understand ourselves. An im-
portant thing happens every time we make a decision-we come
closer to knowing who we really are. That's because we pour our
ethics, priorities, and values into every decision. We become, in
essence, the sum total of all the decisions we make in our life.
And our decisions can have an effect on the people around us, as
well. As an employer or as a parent, you mold the people around
you. The decisions you make affect everyone with whom you
come in contact.
Think of the three most critical decisions you've made in
your life. How would your life have been different if you'd gone
in adifferent direction? What if you'd decided to go into the work
force after high school instead of going to college? What if you'd
married the first person with whom you were infatuated? What if