Mastering decision management skills

Learning is a lifelong process.  Sometimes what we think we know is the enemy of learning.  Learning starts with the admission (to ourselves) that we have a knowledge/skill gap to fill.  That takes humility or an imminent need to stand up and teach something to a group that we respect or fear. 
I’ve been talking to lots of [...]

Criteria: Research Strategy and Study Concept

Yesterday I described the decision pattern associated with a Research Strategy.  Within the Decision Driven® Strategy web service, a decision pattern includes a structured set of well-framed decisions (fundamental questions that demand an answer/solution) and the typical criteria (stakeholder objectives, parameters, constraints, factors to consider) for each decision.
The criteria pattern for the Research Strategy decision [...]

Decision: Research Strategy

Some of you may work in the very early stages of investigating science or translating science into new and useful technologies that create the value engine for new products.  Although most of my clients through the years have taken relatively proven technologies and system-engineered them in clever ways to deliver new solutions, decision patterns can [...]

When should I use problem analysis?

Even though problem analysis involves a completely distinct thinking process than decision-making, I often have to clarify this distinction before I can move folks to get on with the decisions that will create their future.  See my April 17 blog entry, “Problem-solving is decision-making, problem analysis is not” for more details.
I’m a future-focused, future-creating individual.  [...]

Efficient RFPs

A Request for Proposal (RFP) is a very common method of selecting suppliers for components, services or capabilities.  From a human thinking perspective, an RFP is ALWAYS just a data-gathering tool for informing a decision or set of tightly-coupled decisions.  The supplier who responds to an RFP is proposing themselves (or their products, services or [...]

Models inform decisions

I often repeat the claim that decisions provide the context (superstructure, framework, skeleton, glue) for all other future-focused information.  Decisions create the future and anything that exists (as far as humans can reach) flows from conscious or unconscious decisions on the part of human beings.
Today, let me pick on models.  I know there is some [...]

Some assembly, er training required

My primary motivation behind creating the Decision Driven® Strategy and Life web services was to pass on some really valuable skills and concepts to a much broader audience than I could ever reach using a traditional consulting model.  In a large company, high tech environment, I typically have delivered a 3-day hands-on workshop to transfer the unique [...]

Gates don’t accelerate

Many companies use a product development process that includes a series of gates.  At each gate they conduct a gate review to determine whether the product is ready for the next phase of development; if not they send it back for more due diligence or use the gate review as a “bail-out” decision point and [...]

Where do decisions end and implementation details begin?

Decisions are the human thinking process by which we create the future.  The more skilled you become at managing your business, your project or your life as a network of decisions, the more you will see that a truly comprehensive decision pattern underlies all that you think and do.  The decisions are there, in a [...]

Transforming science into technology into products into business

Decisions create your future!
Whether you think of launching a new business from a top-down perspective (starting from your Vision) or bottom-up (starting from a promising scientific behavior to exploit and build around), the value of your business is created one decision at a time.  When you’re done, there will be a linked thread/network of value-creating [...]