Coaching for Leaders

499: The Way to Make Better Decisions, with Annie Duke

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Annie Duke: How to Decide

Annie Duke is an author, corporate speaker, and consultant in the decision-making space. As a former professional poker player, Annie won more than $4 million in tournament poker before retiring from the game in 2012.

Prior to becoming a professional player, Annie was awarded a National Science Foundation Fellowship to study Cognitive Psychology at the University of Pennsylvania. She is the co-founder of The Alliance for Decision Education, a non-profit whose mission to improve lives by empowering students through decision skills education.

Annie is the author of Thinking in Bets* and her newest book, How to Decide: Simple Tools for Making Better Choices*.

Key Points
  • Better decision-making aims to reduce resulting and hindsight bias.
  • Avoid using a pro/cons list in decision-making, as it tends to reinforce biases you already have.
  • Use a decision tree to document potential decisions, possible outcomes, and the likelihood those outcomes will occur.
  • More people being involved in a decision is helpful, assuming you are actually leveraging each person’s independent thinking.
  • Negative thinking will help you foresee potential problems along the path of your decision so you can do a better job of mitigating issues before they occur.
    • Resources Mentioned
    • How to Decide: Simple Tools for Making Better Choices* by Annie Duke
    • Thinking, Fast and Slow* by Daniel Kahneman
    • The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right* by Atul Gawande
    • The Alliance for Decision Education
      • Book Notes

      Download my highlights from How to Decide in PDF format (free membership required).

      Related Episodes
      • How Women Make Stronger, Smarter Choices, with Therese Huston (episode 255)
      • How to Approach Corporate Budgeting, with Jody Wodrich (episode 355)
      • How to Ask Better Questions, with David Marquet (episode 454)
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