Decision making. (Executive Briefing).

Making decisions is easy. Making the right decisions is the hard part.

Physician executives looking for help to make good decisions should check out the article "What You Don't Know About Making Decisions" (Garvin and Roberto, Harvard Business Review, Sept. 2001, p. 108-116).

Charles Shabino, MD, MS, CPE, FACPE, who is a leader of ACPE's Chief Medical Officer Forum says the article compares inquiry to advocacy.

Inquiry allows a group of decision-makers to act as collaborative problem solvers and critical thinkers. Advocacy, by contrast, is more of a contest between decision-makers who lobby each other and end up as either winners or losers.

"As physician executives, we've spent too much time in group decision making based on the advocacy approach," Shabino says.

An excellent book on decision-making is Decision Traps: The Ten Barriers to Brilliant Decision-Making and How to Overcome Them by J. Edward Russo and Paul J. H. Schoemaker (Fireside Books, 1989, paperback available).

Russo, from Cornell University, and Schoemaker, at the University of Chicago, offer in-depth analysis of the decision-making process and break it down to four stages. Most importantly, they show you 10 major ways for decisions to go wrong.

ACPE Small Practice Forum leader Trey Washburn, MD, says anyone charged with making decisions should read this book at least once a year.