[...]... investigation alone, and study the situation more fully DEVELOPING DECISIONMAKING SKILLS FOR BUSINESS This page intentionally left blank PART I WANTS, ABILITIES, AND GOALS You must know your goals, and you must be able to specify your criteria of success in life, in order to make use of the machinery for evaluative analysis that helps you make decisions among various possible courses of conduct—the... disastrously wrong decisions Chapter 6 describes devices to avoid these cost pitfalls Uncertainty is a key difficulty in decision- making Chapter 7 presents intellectual machinery for dealing with uncertainty in a systematic fashion when valuing and comparing alternatives People sometimes enjoy uncertainty, and some even are willing to pay for it in gambling More commonly, though, uncertainty is a nega- OVERVIEW... with ever finer analysis of your desires but with ever worse paralysis of action I once heard Herbert Simon (no relation, but a Nobel Prize-winning economist and psychologist), who knows as much about decision- making as any living person, refer to the ultimate decision- making tool—and then took a coin out of his pocket and flipped it Biological and Learned Wants Our desires also differ in their different... around the pitfalls so as to arrive more closely at mental clarity and self-discipline Chapter 18 focuses on dealings with people and managing social interactions The entire business of creating ideas, obtaining relevant information, evaluating the alternatives, and drawing conclusions—the subjects of parts III and IV—is a back-and-forth process rather than a neat series of steps, even though it is necessary... setting the goals Part II discusses “cost-benefit analysis”—the comparative evaluation of a list of available alternatives Though the method of cost-benefit thinking was developed for economic situations, it often can usefully be extended to other types of choices—into science and psychotherapy, for example The reason we discuss it at length is that business- type analysis is wonderfully simpler than... ideas, developing alternatives, and obtaining sound knowledge of the world around you Chapter 10 offers techniques for developing ideas by recourse to experience and imagination, and also techniques for eliminating inferior ideas from further consideration A key issue is whether radical ideas with far-reaching consequences will be considered further, or whether the scope will be limited to less far-reaching... preparing your list, inspect it for incompatibilities among your wants—between leisure and making a lot of money, perhaps, or between deepening your personal education and getting ahead on the job When you ask and answer which wants are more important to you, you have information to improve your priorities We can form and indulge our preferences for entertainment, say, and our tastes for types of restaurants... publish it Julian considered this a very important book in his rather large arsenal of publications Rita Simon Overview of Business Psychology The Book’s Purpose This book teaches ways to improve your mind so that you can live better The skills it teaches range from making business decisions to choosing life goals and getting to sleep quickly Life Is Complicated The sensible place to begin thinking about... there is a general lesson here, too: Often we leave our studies in self-knowledge for our after-hours time, when we are tired and therefore not very productive As I found out in conquering my depression in 1975 (see the story in my book Good Mood),2 often the solutions come only when you commit yourself to working on the job of remaking yourself just as you commit yourself to other tough jobs Prepare... single, known goal But in some choices—such as your choice of loyalties, or what to do with your life, or whether it is worth the effort needed to make yourself happier—cost-benefit thinking may cause more damage than benefit Chapter 4 presents the framework for making cost-benefit evaluations, and illustrates its use when the outcomes are rather certain and where all the important consequences occur . alt="" DEVELOPING DECISION - MAKING SKILLS FOR BUSINESS This page intentionally left blank M.E.Sharpe Armonk, New York London, England Julian L. Simon DEVELOPING DECISION - MAKING SKILLS FOR BUSINESS Julian. Julian Lincoln, 1932– Developing decision-making skills for business / Julian L. Simon. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-7656-0676-3 (alk. paper) 1. Decision-making. 2 of American National Standard for Information Sciences Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z 39.48-1984. ~ BM (c)10987654321 Contents Preface vii Overview of Business Psychology xi Part