The Decision Book: Fifty Models for Strategic Thinking
One book, placed in its field — what Mikael Krogerus and Roman Tschäppeler's book gets right, where it goes further than the rest, and what the rest of the field adds.
Mike West, Editor · HR Leader Guide · get2great.com/guides/profile-the_decision_book_fifty_models_for
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The Decision Book: Fifty Models for Strategic Thinking
One book, placed in its field — what Mikael Krogerus and Roman Tschäppeler's book gets right, where it goes further than the rest, and what the rest of the field adds.
Mike West, Editor · HR Leader Guide · get2great.com/guides/profile-the_decision_book_fifty_models_for
The problem
Decision Quality and Satisfaction erodes when it is left to instinct instead of method.
You were taught the moves piecemeal, never the whole model.
The Decision Book: Fifty Models for Strategic Thinking · Mike West, Editor · HR Leader Guide
The model
- 01Use of Decision-Making Models
- 02Use of Simple Rules and Limits
- 03Decision Complexity and Uncertainty
- 04Choice Overload
- 05Expectation Calibration
- 06Decision Clarity and Reduced Doubt
- 07Cognitive Bias
- 08Self-Knowledge
The Decision Book: Fifty Models for Strategic Thinking · Mike West, Editor · HR Leader Guide
Step 1 of 5 · Use of Decision-Making Models
Match the model to the question, not to your mood — each of the fifty answers a different class of problem.
Misconception
Practitioners believe more models means better thinking, so they run a situation through several frameworks hoping one will hand them the answer.
Reality
A model does not produce the decision; it strips the situation to the few variables you must weigh, and the choice still comes from your judgment. Running multiple frameworks on the same problem usually multiplies noise rather than converging on truth.
The Decision Book: Fifty Models for Strategic Thinking · Mike West, Editor · HR Leader Guide
Step 2 of 5 · Use of Simple Rules and Limits
A rule you can renegotiate under pressure is not a rule — commit to the trigger before emotion enters the picture.
Misconception
Practitioners believe simple rules are a crutch for lazy or unsophisticated thinkers, and that important decisions deserve open-ended, case-by-case analysis.
Reality
Rules are strongest precisely on high-stakes, repeated, emotionally loaded decisions, where the discipline to stop protects you from rationalization and sunk-cost drift; the sophistication lives in designing the rule, not in relitigating it each time.
The Decision Book: Fifty Models for Strategic Thinking · Mike West, Editor · HR Leader Guide
Step 3 of 5 · Decision Complexity and Uncertainty
The right question is not 'how important is this?' but 'how well-structured and knowable is this?' — that determines whether to compute or to sense.
Misconception
Practitioners believe that harder, higher-stakes decisions always demand more data, more analysis, and more deliberation.
Reality
Beyond a threshold of ambiguity and interacting variables, added analysis produces false precision and paralysis; in genuinely uncertain, expertise-rich domains, trained intuition often outperforms exhaustive scoring.
The Decision Book: Fifty Models for Strategic Thinking · Mike West, Editor · HR Leader Guide
Step 4 of 5 · Choice Overload
Fewer, pre-filtered options produce both faster decisions and higher satisfaction with them.
Misconception
Practitioners believe that adding options can only help — worst case, they ignore the extra ones.
Reality
Each additional option raises the reference point against which you judge your final pick, so more choice inflates what you expect and guarantees the winner feels like a compromise. The cost is paid in dissatisfaction, not just deliberation time.
The Decision Book: Fifty Models for Strategic Thinking · Mike West, Editor · HR Leader Guide
Step 5 of 5 · Expectation Calibration
Satisfaction is the gap between outcome and expectation, so calibrating the expectation is often easier than improving the outcome.
Misconception
People assume that aiming as high as possible is always motivating and therefore never harmful.
Reality
Expectations function as the yardstick you measure the result against, so unreachable standards convert every real outcome into a shortfall. The goal is not lower ambition but a target that reality can plausibly reach.
The Decision Book: Fifty Models for Strategic Thinking · Mike West, Editor · HR Leader Guide
The Decision Book: Fifty Models for Strategic Thinking · Mike West, Editor · HR Leader Guide
The cheat sheet
- Use of Decision-Making ModelsMatch the model to the question, not to your mood — each of the fifty answers a different class of problem.
- Use of Simple Rules and LimitsA rule you can renegotiate under pressure is not a rule — commit to the trigger before emotion enters the picture.
- Decision Complexity and UncertaintyThe right question is not 'how important is this?' but 'how well-structured and knowable is this?' — that determines whether to compute or to sense.
- Choice OverloadFewer, pre-filtered options produce both faster decisions and higher satisfaction with them.
- Expectation CalibrationSatisfaction is the gap between outcome and expectation, so calibrating the expectation is often easier than improving the outcome.
- Decision Clarity and Reduced DoubtA structuring model converts a tangled problem into a small set of distinctions you can actually decide on.
- Cognitive BiasYou cannot introspect your way out of a bias; design decision processes that catch errors structurally.
- Self-KnowledgeFeedback analysis over months reveals your real competencies more accurately than any personality test or self-belief.
The Decision Book: Fifty Models for Strategic Thinking · Mike West, Editor · HR Leader Guide
Sources
- The Decision Book: Fifty Models for Strategic Thinking — Mikael Krogerus and Roman Tschäppeler
The Decision Book: Fifty Models for Strategic Thinking · Mike West, Editor · HR Leader Guide