Bulletproof Decisions: How Executives Can Get It Right, Every Time

by Ruben Ugarte

Overview

We are told from a young age that we should strive to make the right decisions, but we aren’t taught exactly how to do this. Every day, we make over 35,000 decisions in our personal and professional lives. How many of those decisions do we get right? This book will help business executives systematically tackle these 35,000 decisions. Executives are forced to make critical decisions that impact their lives, their employees’ lives, and the lives of their customers. Decisions like what products to create, who should be hired, and what divisions to shut down are all commonplace in the executive suite.

This book offers three strategies for dealing with decisions: problem-solving techniques, routines, and decision-making frameworks. Each strategy is designed to help readers achieve more clarity, gain time back, and improve the quality of their decisions. The first one focuses on helping readers solve the right problem instead of wasting time on the wrong one. The second strategy helps deal with decisions that need to be made once but can then be executed regularly. The third and final strategy provides a three-step framework for making the most important decisions in their lives.

The focus of the author’s work is on helping readers use data to make better decisions. This book gives readers the tools to convert the insights they learn from their data into actionable decisions.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781032028255
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	12/16/2021
Pages:	224
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x (d)

About the Author

Ruben Ugarte is a Data Strategist at Practico Analytics, where he has worked with 75+ companies from 5 continents and all company stages, including Cornell University, Jive, Destination BC, and Circle. He has helped them use data to make higher-quality decisions and unlock hidden insights. For example, one of his clients is the British Columbia government, who needed help sorting through all their data to determine how to adapt their tourism marketing due to COVID-19. Another example is Paymark, which is the largest payment processor in New Zealand. They needed help figuring out how to best support their small merchant clients as they dealt with ongoing lockdowns. All his clients need to make decisions with limited resources and rapidly changing conditions. Ruben provides them with pragmatic strategies and frameworks that work in the real world. These are the same ideas that will be covered in this book. He also maintains a popular blog that has been read by over 100,000 readers. Ruben’s ideas and work have been featured in industry-leading blogs, such as ConversionXL and Openview Labs. He resides in Vancouver, BC, and spends his free time exploring new bike routes.

Table of Contents

1. 35,000 Reasons Why You Need This Book 2. The 5 Forces Behind All Decisions and Why You Gravitate Toward Some 3. Before You Decide, Choose a Problem Worth Solving 4. The Turtleneck Principle for Making Decisions Once and for All 5. Using the 3 Os Framework for the Critical Few 6. Knowing What’s Best, When to Decide, and How to Tell Them Apart 7. Behind the Scenes to Some of the Most Important Decisions 8. The 7 Pillars of Effective Decision Making for Individuals & Teams 9. Understanding Why You Made the Wrong or Right Decision 10. Trusting Your Gut in a World Ruled by Data

Editorial Reviews

2021-12-17
A manual focuses on making well-reasoned decisions in business and personal contexts.

In this guide, Ugarte offers readers a framework for making decisions that can be applied to personal choices as well as professional ones, although the book concentrates primarily on the business aspects of the process. The manual urges readers to maintain perspective, delegate appropriately, use relevant data, and develop a rubric for brainstorming and assessing options. The author encourages readers to automate the process where possible (a tactic he calls “the turtleneck principle,” citing Steve Jobs’ daily wearing of the shirts) and to use a framework of outcomes, options, and obstacles (“the 3 Os”) to structure and steer more complicated and high-stakes decisions. The book also explores decision-making from a leadership perspective, with an emphasis on the importance of avoiding micromanagement and allowing subordinates to take ownership of their own assessments. The volume’s final chapter addresses the use of data in decision-making, supplying solutions for feeling overwhelmed by too much information and guidance on when intuition is more important than numbers. The generally solid manual provides actionable insights and workable strategies, although it would have benefited from stronger editing. Ugarte displays a tendency to return to favorite examples repeatedly; for instance, the Chilean economy and the work of author Alan Weiss make multiple appearances in the text. The “behind the decision” case studies that appear throughout the volume often detract from the primary argument by presenting insufficient details and analysis or by engaging superficially with historical events. Ugarte is on much firmer ground discussing the decisions made by technology executives, skillfully using those choices to illustrate the book’s “3 Os.” That framework and other strategies presented in these pages are concrete enough to follow and flexible enough to fit a variety of circumstances, making the manual applicable to a broad audience. By encouraging readers to understand not only what decisions need to be made, but also the sociocultural forces that shape them and why the potential outcomes matter, the work delivers a grounded perspective.

A wide-ranging, helpful guide to formulating effective decisions.

Kirkus Reviews

"A universal premise and thought-provoking introduction from a data practitioner. Perception over control of our decisions means that we should spend time understanding how the skill of decision-making can be improved." —
Celeste Johnson, reedsy.com

From the Publisher