book review: The Decision Book by Mikael Krogerus and Roman Tschappeler

The Decision Book is not the usual book I would dive into as it contains a series of management models that are designed to make you work, think and interact better.

But because it is presented in such an easily digestible way with illustrations making the short descriptions of the management models more understandable there are high chances this book will be absorbed and prove to be useful.

The cover blurb offers fifty models for strategic thinking and because of the sheer volume there are some things served up that mean very little to you but others do go in. I picked out seven over the course of my reading and some of those have sunk in the brain and should help me in the future.

Also worth mentioning is the interactive nature of the book and the encouragement given from the authors to the reader to make up their own models and to take some lessons from the book. Pages at the back left blank for your own scribbles and jottings are part of the process of kicking off that dialogue.

Making decisions, particularly big ones, is never something easy but this book points out that many other great minds have struggled with how to make the right choices in the past and it is possible to learn from their experiences.

Life is too random to be defined by models but coming to a problem with a strategic mind is bound to be better than spinning a bottle and hoping it provides you with the right answer.

The Decision Book: post VII

The final dip into the Decision Book is a chance to note how thinking of the past has been gently challenged by the experiences of the present.

The old 80/20 model set out by Vilfredo Pareto at the start of the last century had not only become established thinking but a model that was so widely accepted that the idea the 80% might have some value to rival the 20% something that seemed highly unlikely.

But back in 2004 the editor of Wired Chris Anderson came up with the Long Tail model. Using the internet the point of the model was that the 80% of goods beyond the core 20% will eventually be sold and have more value than the core goods.

The long tail has now become something to drop into conversations as a justification for backing what might have seemed like risky bets in the past. The problem is that in that 80% there are surely degrees of quality and right at the end of the tail it must be a fairly lonely old time.

A review will follow later this week...

The Decision Book: post VI

In the final couple of posts from the Decision Book the focus moves onto using management models to understand other people better. In the next two posts I will pick out a couple I liked.

The first is The Maslow Pyramids model which in a nutshell looks at the basic human needs and then adds on top of those, pyramid style, the aspirations that are optional but nice to have.

So we all need to have food, a place to sleep, security and social relationships but let's face it we'd like to also add to that recognition, with its money and fame, and self-actualisation.

What it seems to make you think is that sometimes we can take for granted the essentials in our chase for the elusive wealth that is not perhaps that vital.

More next week..

The Decision Book: post V

One of the things people say as a cliche is to live in the present and not in the past. But there has to be a careful balance struck between being stuck in the past, or as The Decision Book describes it being caught in a memory-driven model, and the future.

There are also real dangers becoming a dreamer hoping that the future turns out better than the present or the past will leave you failing to make the right decisions in the here and now.

Not easy to get that balance right but the book is good at highlighting the dangers of both a memory and a future dreamer model.


There will be more posts about this book throughout the month with a chance for a lucky insidebooks reader to win a copy of the book.

The Decision Book: post IV

The second section of the Decision Book, which is where the next couple of posts draw their inspiration, looks at how you can understand yourself better.

Cognitive dissonance are not two words I use that often. But they are ones I will remember now because it describes an interesting idea. How can you carry on doing something that you know is wrong with self justification is what those two words describe.

"How can we overcome this dissonance? Either by changing our behaviour or our attitude."

Not an easy thing to do.


There will be more posts about this book throughout the month with a chance for a lucky insidebooks reader to win a copy of the book.

The Decision Book: post III

Setting goals is one of the most oft couple of words that you expect anyone talking about personal development to say.

The Decision Book contains the advice that goals should be challenging but also achievable. if you set a goal too high then it can have a demoralizing effect.

The example given is of running a marathon. I like running and might well want to run a marathon one day but more achievable goals of running more regularly and further distances are needed first.

It's like setting out to read 100 books a year having been nothing more than a casual reader before. You won't know how to pace yourself or recognise the danger signs that you are falling behind. Not that I have ever reached 100 books but just getting to 80 plus last year was a challenge.

There will be more posts about this book throughout the month with a chance for a lucky insidebooks reader to win a copy of the book.

The Decision Book: post II

Another post from this highly informative book. This model looks at the project portfolio matrix.

if you think of your life as a project, or a particular aspect of it in that way, it is useful to try and prioritize activities.

Cost and time are the two examples of potential sides of a scale that can be used to measure whether or not something is useful to a project.

For me it is often a question of time that dictates my decision, particularly around reading.

There will be more posts about this book throughout the month with a chance for a lucky insidebooks reader to win a copy of the book.

The Decision Book: post I

When to make a decision is a rather useful thing to think about. Everyday we face the need to make decisions but the challenge is perhaps to think about the right way to respond to them.

The Decision Book is a collection of different models for strategic thinking and one of the first you come across in the How to improve yourself section is about the way decisions should be timed.

Referring to the Eisenhower Method, coined by the former US president, he talked about the need to determine which things were critical and which could be delayed or deferred, which will help determine the priority of a decision and as a result help you work out how long you should take to make it.

There will be more posts about this book throughout the month with a chance for a lucky insidebooks reader to win a copy of the book.