Heads You Win!

by Spitzer, Quinn; Evans, Ron

• ISBN13: 9780684804316
• ISBN10: 068480431X
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1997-03-01
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster

Summary

In Heads, You Win!, Kepner-Tregoe's CEO, Quinn Spitzer, and executive Ron Evans argue that problem solving and decision making are no longer just individual tasks, but rather have become collective activities. The question then becomes: How confident are you in the collective brainpower of your organization? And how do you weave proficiency in critical thinking into the very fabric of an enterprise? In their provocative and extraordinarily practical book, Spizer and Evans cite the experiences and share the advice of the presidents and CEOs of some of the world's best businesses who have learned how to create thinking organizations: Roger Ackerman of Corning Incorporated, Ralph Larsen of Johnson & Johnson, Robert Lutz of Chrysler Corporation, Sir Colin Marshall of British Airways, and Richard Teerlink of Harley-Davidson, Inc., to name a few. There is also expert commentary from a pantheon of management experts, including Kenneth Blanchard, Henry Mintzberg, Tom Peters, C. K. Prahalad, Peter Senge, and Noel Tichy. The authors also describe how some of the most innovative companies are winning by capitalizing on the brainpower of every employee. And finally, they examine those issues that have the most significant impact, in the current business environment, on problem-solving and decision-making processes: data overload versus information sufficiency, the teaming of the workplace, business organizations viewed as a system, the roles of intuition and rationality, and leadership quality and core values.

Table of Contents

Introduction	9	(6)
CHAPTER 1: The Primal Manager	15	(15)
CHAPTER 2: Situation Appraisal--Clearing the Path	30	(11)
CHAPTER 3: Problem Solving--The Eternal Search for "Why"	41	(19)
CHAPTER 4: Decision Drag in a Nanosecond World	60	(23)
CHAPTER 5: Rx for Futurephobia	83	(22)
CHAPTER 6: Taming Data Overload	105	(16)
CHAPTER 7: All Together Now: Critical Thinking in Teams	121	(23)
CHAPTER 8: Systems Thinking: Why You Can't KISS	144	(25)
CHAPTER 9: Dr. McCoy, Please Report to the Flight Deck--Intuition and Rationality in Decision Making	169	(16)
CHAPTER 10: The Socratic Leader--Asking the Right Questions	185	(12)
CHAPTER 11: Campfire of the Vanities--Values in Decision Making	197	(17)
CHAPTER 12: Deployment: Putting It into Play	214	(27)
Appendix: The Kepner-Tregoe Rational Processes: An Overview	241	(44)
Acknowledgments	285	(4)
Index	289