Left Brain, Right Stuff

How Leaders Make Winning Decisions

Phil Rosenzweig
Public Affairs © 2014
336 pages
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Rating Take-Aways

9
8 Applicability • Decision making calls for an analytical, reasoned approach – that’s the “left brain” –
plus the willingness to accept risk and the ability to manage it – that’s the “right stuff.”
9 Innovation
9 Style • Factoring your competitors’ probable actions into your strategic decisions can be
bafflingly complex.

• Strategic decisions differ notably from investment decisions or purchase decisions.

 
Focus • “Decision models” and decision research are of little use in strategic decision making.

• As you plan, determine whether the performance you must achieve is absolute – good,
Leadership & Management regardless of external factors – or relative – good in comparison to the competition.
Strategy
Sales & Marketing
• Minor improvements in your absolute performance boost your relative performance.
Finance • A positive attitude helps, especially when your decisions affect results.
Human Resources
IT, Production & Logistics • People often attribute errors in judgment to overconfidence. In reality, most people
could benefit from more confidence, not less.
Career & Self-Development
Small Business • When you act, apply your wits to “mold, shape, transform and reconstitute” your
Economics & Politics situation into the reality you want to achieve.
Industries
• As you focus on the particulars of decision making, do not neglect the broader context.
Global Business
Concepts & Trends

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getabstract

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Relevance
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What You Will Learn
In this summary, you will learn:r1) What decision research involves, 2) What “decision models” are, 3) Why models
and decision research are not useful for strategic decision making, and 4) What the primary requirements for strategic
decision making mandate.
getabstract
Review
Most social science research about decision making is not relevant to corporate strategic planning decisions, which are
notably different from investment or purchase decisions. Phil Rosenzweig, a professor at IMD, a top Swiss business
school, examines business decision making from the point of view of a strategist. He strikes a balance between two
recommendations – make a careful “left brain” analysis and be sure you have the “right stuff” to move ahead boldly
– as he explains what competitive decision making requires in context. getAbstract praises his innovative model for
its broad spectrum of thought and guidance about the nuts and bolts of strategic decision making, and suggests it
to decision makers at all levels.
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Summary
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Tough Choices
Executives who make business decisions with multiple factors in play and extensive
consequences at stake face considerable challenges. Strategic planners must prioritize their
choices in often-confusing circumstances. While people should avoid the biases in their
getabstract thinking to make better decisions, complex corporate decision making requires more.
“Recent empirical
research suggests that,
in many industries, Social scientists conduct extensive research to discover why and how people make
competitive advantage
is difficult to maintain decisions. They examine the choices people make when they have no control or influence
and that the speed over the outcome of an event and no ability to alter the terms of the experiment. Researchers
of regression toward
the mean is becoming structure their testing this way so they can compare and evaluate the results.
faster.”
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Such orderly, controlled research has developed reliable, worthwhile data on how people
make decisions. Psychologist and author Dan Ariely explains, “For social scientists,
experiments are like microscopes or strobe lights, magnifying and illuminating the
complex, multiple forces that simultaneously exert their influences on us.” This is useful in
determining how and why consumers and investors make buying decisions.

getabstract Unanswered Questions

“It might be preferable
to have managers However, when it comes to strategic planning and business decisions, social science leaves
imagine (sometimes many questions unanswered for four reasons:
falsely) that they can
control their fates,
rather than suffer 1. Business and strategic decisions require that people make their plans on the basis of
the consequences of determining which events and outcomes they can influence and which they can’t.
imagining (sometimes
falsely) that they 2. Business and strategic decisions can involve the external factor of competition.
cannot.” 3. Business and strategic decisions don’t involve tidy choices with clear results that present
getabstract
themselves immediately; a company’s leaders might not know if a decision was good
or bad for months or even years.
4. Business leaders usually consider numerous complex factors that don’t lend themselves
to the tightly controlled decision-making environment of a social science lab.

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 Laboratory research on decision making puts the “processes of judgment and choice” under
a magnifying glass, but research results have limited application outside of the lab. “Much
mischief can be wrought by transplanting this hypothesis-testing logic, which flourishes
in controlled lab settings, into the hurly-burly of real-world settings...,” says psychologist
getabstract Philip Tetlock.
“Learning to make
better decisions –
smarter, wiser and more In Thinking Fast and Slow, psychologist Daniel Kahneman explains that thinking and
likely to lead to success
– is a high priority.” decision making involve two systems: System 1, which is intuitive, represents quick – and
getabstract often erroneous – thinking; and System 2, which is reflective and reinforces and improves
System 1. This multiple-layer framework for thinking works if individuals have “educated”
their System 2 thinking processes to include as many reinforcements as possible. Business
decision makers need to know how to reinforce their planning decisions at the System 2
level. They must think strategically about making practical decisions in the real world.

“Left Brain, Right Stuff”

Superior decision making involves the “left brain” – an analytical and reasoned approach –
getabstract and the “right stuff” – the willingness to accept risk and the ability to manage it intelligently.
“The failure to act is a
greater sin than taking
action and failing, Left-brain thinking helps you establish the difference between what you can and can’t affect.
because action brings
at least a possibility It aids in determining whether and when to act; in reviewing past events to decide if you
of success, whereas need new approaches; and in ascertaining when decision-making models make sense and
inaction brings none.”
getabstract when they don’t. The right stuff gives you confidence in your abilities to master challenges,
to achieve unprecedented performance and to inspire others to take reasonable risks.

“Overconfidence”
Common wisdom says overconfidence is a problem. However, in today’s intensely
competitive world, confidence is essential. Your level of confidence must not lead to
complacency or the assumption that success is a given. Most people need more confidence,
not less. Evidence supports the value of self-confidence. Consider golf, “a game of
getabstract
“Admonishing a group confidence.” Professional golfer Ian Poulter says, “Very few people at the top of this
of executives with wonderful game lack self-belief. Mine is often mistaken for arrogance – but if you don’t
a simple classroom
demonstration may be
think you’ll be good, you won’t be.”
good theater, but it tells
us little about decisions Think Positive
in real-world settings.”
getabstract “Decision models” don’t depend on fallible humans. They rely on computers, data,
algorithms, and so on. These models can achieve stunning accuracy rates and they can be
very useful to organizations. But they involve situations that people can’t directly influence
and are thus of little applicability in strategic planning, which focuses on positively affecting
real-world outcomes.

When you must make a decision, first ask: Can you influence the outcome? If your answer
is no, a decision model may be useful. If your answer is yes, forget about decision models.
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Your job when you must decide is not to predict an outcome. It is to make the outcome
“Decisions differ and you want become reality. That requires believing in yourself; the more positive you feel
different situations call about the outcome, the better the chances you will achieve it. Confident leaders inspire
for markedly different
actions.” those around them.
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If you have no control over the outcome – such as when you’re gambling with dice – all the
positive thinking in the world will not affect the outcome. Yet many dice and lottery players
have an “illusion of control” bias, thinking incorrectly that they are able to influence the
outcome of random events.

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 Self-confident, hard-working people work on directing the outcomes of the controllable
events in their lives, including their careers. Don’t underestimate how much control you
exert. Often you have more than you imagine. Once you decide what to do, taking action
– rather than doing nothing – is usually the best course. When you act, apply your wits
getabstract
“What is sensible when to “mold, shape, transform and reconstitute” your situation into the reality you want to
performance is absolute achieve. This demands intelligence and boldness, the two requisites for decision-making
may be suicidal when
performance is relative success. In the final analysis, that is the essence of control.
and payoffs are highly
skewed.”
getabstract “Absolute Performance”
In order to outperform the competition when you make a strategic decision, ask whether
you need to perform well in absolute terms or in relative terms.

Absolute performance concerns achievements that you don’t measure against anything else.
Relative performance concerns your competitors and how your firm performs against them.
Reasoning this out and deciding accordingly is strategic thinking. Yale’s Barry Nalebuff
and Princeton’s Avinish Dixit describe such thinking as, “the art of outdoing an adversary,
getabstract knowing that the adversary is trying to do the same to you.” Much decision research
“When it comes to concerns situations in which rivalry is not a factor. Such research provides useful data
managerial decisions,
what seems excessive about the dynamics of “cognitive mechanisms,” but its findings have little applicability to
by one definition can competitive situations, like business.
be useful or even
necessary.”
getabstract If performance is a factor in your decision, determine whether it is relative; are you being
compared? If so, consider the nature of potential payoffs. Are they skewed so that the
leading firm wins all the marbles? If you are responsible for setting strategy for your firm
in this situation, ensure that your decisions enable your firm to come out ahead. This is a
guiding principle of decision making.

As you plan, understand that any improvement to your absolute performance – simply doing
better, no matter how you measure things – will have an enormous effect on your relative
getabstract performance: the success you achieve measured against your competitors. Always strive to
“Great decisions call
for a capacity for do better. Often, you can improve your position vis-à-vis your competitors.
considered and careful
reasoning, as well as
a willingness to take
Gambling
outsize risks.” In a highly competitive environment, you must be willing to gamble. If you aren’t, non-
getabstract
risk-averse rivals can knock your firm out of the box. You can’t stand pat in an aggressive
marketplace; bold competitors will pass you by in no time. You must be bold as well.
Heike Bruch and Sumantra Ghostal, authors of A Bias for Action, sum up this philosophy,
saying that companies must engage in “determined, persistent and relentless action taking
to achieve a purpose against all odds.” Make action your watchword. Never “err on the
side of complacency.”

getabstract
Beware the “winner’s curse,” which comes into play when a company makes such a super-
“It is the brain, not the bold move that even though it wins, it ends up losing in the long run. For example, a
heart or lungs, that is
the critical organ. It
construction company places the lowest bid to win a major contract, but loses money on
is the brain.” (Roger the deal because its bid didn’t adequately cover all its costs.
Bannister, the first
person to run a four-
minute mile) Avoid the tendency to make decisions by focusing on small particulars. Such reasoning
getabstract relies on the “representative heuristic,” a rule for decision making that can lead the thinker
astray, though it is useful sometimes. The danger is that such reasoning relies on the
“base-rate bias,” ignoring general information and paying attention only to specific details.
Instead, base your decisions on the larger context, the “broader population.” Structure your

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 thinking and subsequent decision making not only on what is directly in front of you, but
also on an overall, broader perspective.

The Time Issue

Decision making improves over time. This results from the accumulation of valuable
expertise through “deliberate practice.” Researchers note that deliberate practice, which
getabstract
“Thanks to carefully involves “action, feedback, adjustment and action again,” is the methodology that many
crafted experiments, athletes and other professionals undertake to improve their performance. Deliberate practice
we know a great deal
about the way people has its direct parallel in manufacturing’s Kaizen system, which involves the “disciplined
make judgments and sequence – plan, do, act, check.”
choices.”
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Deliberate practice can be helpful when decision making is the sequential end result of a
particular choice. It enables the decider to improve subsequent decisions. However, this
deliberative process doesn’t work well for strategic decisions, which are often complex and
include results that don’t provide immediate feedback. The bigger the decision, the less
opportunity you have to apply deliberate practice. Effective decision makers differentiate
between decisions that benefit from deliberate practice and those that don’t, and they orient
their thinking accordingly.

The Leader’s Decisions

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“People often make To examine decision making, researchers study how people decide things that affect
judgments and choices them directly. Being highly individuated, this research doesn’t project well for executives,
in ways that run
counter to the tenets of whose decisions affect their business units, or for CEOs, whose decisions affect entire
rationality.” organizations or industries.
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Such decisions involve an additional “social dimension,” in that the decision makers want to
motivate employees and embolden them to achieve new levels of performance, productivity
and profitability. Such inspiration requires leaders with the strength of character to make
tough decisions and take difficult actions in challenging circumstances.

Gene Kranz, flight director during the dramatic Apollo 13 lunar mission episode in 1970,
said of his leadership dynamic: “The leader must set the expectations and no matter what
the difficulty must never waver.” Leaders have to consider numerous complex, confusing
getabstract factors; their process will be markedly different from test subjects’ decision making in
“To know the difference laboratory settings.
between what we can
change and what we
cannot is a profound The Ideal Decision Maker
kind of wisdom.”
getabstract The ideal strategic decision maker is “part tactician, part psychologist” and “part riverboat
gambler.” The tactician operates with a competitive mind-set, carefully planning his or
her moves – that is, making decisions – while considering how rivals will respond. The
psychologist creates desirable outcomes by being an inspiring leader. The riverboat gambler
is always ready to make a bold move. The best decision makers know when and how to
assume each role.
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About the Author
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Phil Rosenzweig, author of The Halo Effect, is a professor at the IMD business school in Lausanne, Switzerland and
a former assistant professor at Harvard Business School.

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