Decide and Deliver

by Marcia W. Blenko, Michael C. Mankins, Paul Rogers

Dithering. Decisions that turn out wrong. Decisions that people sabotage or don't know how to implement. If your company's experiencing these problems, it's not alone. Most organizations don't know how to make and execute good decisions. And they're paying a high price—as profitability and competitiveness erode.

It doesn't have to be this way. In Decide and Deliver , the authors draw on Bain & Company's extensive research to present a five-step process for improving your firm's decision effectiveness:

1. Assess your decision effectiveness—and how your organization affects it.
2. Identify your critical decisions.
3. Set individual critical decisions up for success.
4. Ensure that your company enables and reinforces great decision making and execution.
5. Embed the changes in everyday practice.

Master this process, and you see immediate results: people across your organization collaborate to make crucial decisions better and faster than your rivals. And they execute them flawlessly-fueling unprecedented financial performance.

Filled with powerful hands-on tools and detailed examples from companies as varied as Ford Motor Company, British American Tobacco, Telstra, Lafarge, and ABB UK, Decide and Deliver helps you make decision management a potent competitive weapon in your company.

Genres: Business, Management, Nonfiction

172 pages, Hardcover

First published September 3, 2010

About the author

Marcia Blenko is an advisory partner at Bain & Company. She is currently based in Boston, but spent 13 of her 26 years at Bain advising clients in the firm's London office.

Reviews

[Li Li · Rating 2 out of 5]

A pretty quick read as most of the content is not net new to me. The book addresses organizational decision making process and framework at a very high level. It also introduces the benchmark and measure of decision making efficiency and org health with some examples (e.g. ABB company...).

The writing is very dry. Theoretically, it's a book for someone who wants a high-level intro on organizational decision making, but I found it with very little practical use. All the concepts and ideas are good, but the question is, how do you make these concepts with practical usage?

[Eric Michels · Rating 4 out of 5]

A solid book - this is what the great mass of business mechanics books should aspire to be. It is a very quick read authored by experienced practitioners that offered a couple of really insightful takeaway thoughts, particularly on the nature of identifying the different types and levels of importance of decisions throughout the organization.

[გიორგი გურჯიევი · Rating 2 out of 5]

1 star for cover, 1 star for bullshit

[Ryan O'Connor · Rating 4 out of 5]

I picked up Decide & Deliver after struggling to understand the attributes of effective decision-making. I manage a new business intelligence capability in and wanted an objective way to measure improvements in organizational decision-making resulting from investments in business intelligence and analytics. Decide & Deliver provides a useful way to measure several dimensions if decision making and diagnostic tools to identify areas to focus on to improve the link between decisions and outcomes.

[dakotapie · Rating 3 out of 5]

This has been one of the better assigned readings for work - at least it's somewhat contemporary - but I felt it was redundant. Also. Most of the suggestions were common sense business (and life) practices that the authors seem to take responsibility for coming up with. And then more repetition in case you didn't understand the first time they said something.

[Danielle · Rating 3 out of 5]

Read this for work. It's got some good content albeit very dry academic/consulting industry stuff. I think the HBR article that explains the RAPID decision-making method is more than adequate for most people. This book is probably most appropriate for senior leaders and/or those leading major organizational change efforts.

[Andrea James · Rating 3 out of 5]

It had a couple of good points but a lot of the self assessment seems misguided. For instance, in assessing whether your organisation has made good decisions people's biases and memory of how and why things were done are often influenced by the outcome and results.