Psychology of Decision Making with Michelle Florendo

AMA (Ask Me Anything) episode with Michelle Florendo, a former consultant, a decisions analysis expert & career coach for Type A professionals.   A Stanford University graduate with a degree in decision engineering & analysis, Michelle shares her career journey in consulting and some of her lessons learned.

“What we were taught was to be successful but not to be happy.”

Michelle unpacks the concept of decision making for those that may be feeling stuck in their career or at a crossroads.

“The quality of your decision is separate and distinct from the quality of the outcome.”

She breaks down  the components of strategic decision making, providing simple yet actionable steps, best practices, and recommendations on how you can make decisions to live a happier, healthier life.

Listen to the Episode Here:

For episode 25, we will be doing a segment that I call AMA, Ask Me Anything. If this is your first time tuning in, AMAs are when I have the utmost pleasure of connecting with a seasoned or a former consultant and they share their career journey and give you advice. We have Michelle Florendo. A little bit about Michelle, she’s a former consultant, engineer, and now a career coach for Type A professionals. In our conversation, she really discusses her career journey and helps break down components of strategic decision-making techniques that you can actually apply immediately in your life. You can also check out my website. Go to MECEMuse.com for tools, links and videos from the show notes where Michelle provides some really actionable information to really help you along your journey to greatness.

We want to get your thoughts. Let us know what you like, what you dislike, what type of guests you want to see more of and less of. We love to make sure that we continue to meet your need and we thank you so much for all of your support. We’ve gotten such a great outpouring of support and that’s really kept this pop-up podcast going. In the meantime, if you’ve got advice or any feedback, feel free to drop us a line [email protected].

Interview with Michelle Florendo

Michelle, thank you so much for joining us on The MECE Muse Unplugged. How are you doing?

I’m doing well. Thanks for having me.

I’m definitely excited about our conversation today. Before we get started, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to the go-getters of The MECE Muse Unplugged.

I feel like with all the different things that I’ve done, the way that I boil things down. I’m essentially an engineer by trade, that’s where I started, but also a Type A management consultant, former brand marketer turned career coach for high-achieving professionals.

It’s just such a nice mash-up, so engineer, consulted and then was a coach. Maybe if you can take a step back and share how did you decide to go into consulting. If you can share with us, that’d be great.

Looking back, I have no idea what consulting was when I started college. I feel that can sometimes be a common thing because to this day, my dad does not understand what I did when I was a consultant. Originally, I was really good at math and science, and so going into school, I went to Stanford, I really knew that I wanted to be an engineer. I wanted to be able to use my analytical skills to be able to solve problems. Engineering seemed to be the way to do it, settled on industrial engineering with a specialization in decision engineering. Over the course of my undergraduate career, I found myself interacting with a lot of different students who were interested also in problem solvi...