You don't make a decision with a calculator. (Review).

Decision Making, online, 2002, Harvard Business School Online, $195 per student per year. Other material: online facilitator guide.

Leaders and managers need to make decisions at the pace of the environment in which they work. That means not just fast decisions but sound ones. The Harvard Business School online course Decision Making helps learners think through both the rational and psychological aspects of decision making.

The course explores these aspects primarily through a case study on customer service. It also includes a set of exercises to test and reinforce the concepts. Articles by experts deepen the student's understanding, and a final quiz tests the student's knowledge.

The course begins with the case study set in the deregulated telephone industry. Deregulation has sharpened competition, and advances in technology have led to an explosion of new products. The changes have fed higher call volumes, more work and stress, and a need for creative marketing approaches. As the head of the customer service department, the learner must make decisions to improve the performance of the department.

Substance and process

To support the learner, the course touches on five of nine psychological traps that impede decisions: anchoring, status quo, sunk costs, confirming evidence, and estimating and forecasting.

In addition, the course includes a framework for making tradeoffs between options by developing a set of criteria and making even swaps, and it demonstrates the importance of intuition in decisions.

Valuable articles are another source of learning. They include "The Hidden Traps in Decision Making," "Even Swaps: A Rational Method for Making Tradeoffs," "When to Trust Your Gut," "Fast-Cycle Decision Making," and "Your Managerial Intuition: How Much Should You Trust It? Can You Improve It?" The articles not only inform a manager's decision making but also stress how to empower others to make decisions.

As I moved through the course, I was reminded of many experiences in the Internet world during the bubble days. The business fundamentals seemed to shift from day to day. Some people were evangelizing for maximum market share, while others worried about a road to profitability. Confusion was rampant.

In one of the companies I worked for, a rumor reached us that a competitor was entering the wireless space. We "decided" to enter too. We had no idea how we were going to make a profitable business out of a wireless venture, but the change in direction also changed how we allocated resources. We had to shift resources that were needed elsewhere to wireless products, delay launches of other products, and alter marketing campaigns. Worse, few people completely bought into the decision, which led to conflict and, in turn, destructive organizational politics.

The decision led to a fiasco. We retrenched, but serious damage had been done. A better decision-making process might have helped us avoid a serious business mistake and company bloodletting.

Features and interface

The program homepage has links to the case, tools, resources, and quiz. Students should click the overview page link to familiarize themselves with the program pedagogy and learning objectives. The page also explains how to use the course interface, gives technical tips, and has a privacy statement. The course content listing includes circles next to each item indicating if they've been visited or completed.

Please note that you can only leave the course via the exit link, or you risk losing your work. You must also keep the window open at all times while taking the course.

In the interactive case section, a summary sets up the situation for you. To proceed, you can play video with an audio track or read the case. I preferred to read the case because I have bandwidth problems downloading video and voice data. Throughout the case, you are asked to make decisions. You are then faced with different scenarios depending on the choice you make.

You can always return to the decision point, choose another option, and play out the next scenario. I often did this to learn from the consequences of different decisions. As I learned at Harvard Business School, there are usually no right or wrong answers, just decisions with better and worse outcomes.

When you complete the case, the program gives you feedback on your decisions, refers you to the leadership concepts of recognized experts, and reviews key points derived from the case. The articles mentioned earlier and other print materials are available as downloadable and printable PDF files.

The tools section includes an option to work with a mentor. You must recruit the individual from your workplace. The course emphasizes the value of working with someone you trust to provide constructive feedback and help monitor how you transfer your learning into practice. I think the mentor suggestion is an excellent one. A mentor can provide additional motivation to keep the learner moving through a self-paced course. Many well-intentioned users of self-paced courses run out of gas and never complete the courses. A mentor also makes the learning collaborative and helps in the difficult work of transferring learning to the job.

Other tools include a series of skills assessments that provide preprogrammed feedback. The follow-up section offers you a chance to make a priority listing of the changes you want to make in the way you lead. The section is action-oriented: it asks what you plan to change, how you plan to change it, and how you will know it has changed. You can set up email reminders of your goals.

The end-of-course quiz assesses your performance. The results are confidential; only you have access to them. However, if you are working with a mentor, he or she may find the results useful for helping you to improve.

Recommendation

I recommend this course to decision makers at all levels of a company or organization. It helps people avoid psychological traps that keep them from thinking clearly and furnishes a framework for making tough tradeoffs of potential options. In addition, it helps people understand the value of intuition in the decision-making process. Interactivity could be more varied and dynamic, and a stronger set of online collaborative tools would encourage more of the peer-to-peer learning for which the classroom-based case method is famous.

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Decision Making product rating


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NR Not rated (usually not enough information)

Tim Anderson ([e-mail]) is vice president of business development for Training Media Review. He has an extensive background in Internet strategy and execution, having worked at Amazon.com, Junglee (acquired by Amazon), Vicinity, and the Dialog Corporation. Tim has an MBA from Harvard Business School.