Difficult Decisions How Leaders Make the Right Call with Insight, Integrity, and Empathy

What do you do when the algorithm doesn’t have the answer? 

Countless tools and frameworks claim to make decisions objective and bias-free. But in reality, the defining decisions that leaders face are complex ones with subjective information sources and conflicting courses of action. That’s why the toughest choices are left to the leaders, and that’s why formulas won’t answer them. 

In Difficult Decisions: How Leaders Make the Right Call with Insight, Integrity, and Empathy, leadership expert and CEO of YSC Consulting, Eric Pliner, delivers a set of practical tools for readers to make sense of these complex, subjective decisions quickly and with integrity. It presents a path to understanding your own subjectivity, and how your morals, ethics, and responsibilities affect how leaders make the most important decisions.  

Difficult Decisions is ideal for executives, managers, and business leaders to examine their own intuition and navigate the most conflicted choices they make. It’s a challenging read and an indispensable resource to help readers develop self-reflection, clarify their values, and ultimately make the choice that is most “right” to them.  

ERIC PLINER is Chief Executive Officer of YSC Consulting, a global leadership strategy consultancy head-quartered in London. His writing on leadership development, organizational culture, education and training, and strategic diversity and inclusion has been featured in Harvard Business Review, Fortune, Forbes, and Fast Company. Eric is a member of the Dramatists’ Guild of America and lives in Brooklyn, New York.

Preface: Writing Wrong 8

Chapter 1: Difficult Decisions 13

Making Decisions 19

How We Make Decisions Now 22

Difficult Decision: Containing Contagion 28

Key Points 31

Chapter 2: The Moral / Ethical / Role Responsibilities Triangle 33

Morals vs. Ethics: Election 36

Jean and Paula 38

Win as Much as You Can 40

Difficult Decision: Furloughing 80% of the Ralph Lauren Workforce 42

Do the Right Thing 48

Key Points 49

Chapter 3: Morals 50

Communicating Your Morality and Asking About Morality 53

Triangle Touchpoint: Values Conflict 56

Knowing the Sources of Your Morality 59

Reflecting on the Sources of Your Morality 60

Understanding the Parameters and Boundaries of Your Morality 61

Difficult Decision: The Philip Guston Retrospective at the National Gallery of Art 64

A Moral Exercise 70

Exercise: Morality and Your Leadership Narrative 72

Key Points 75

Chapter 4: Ethics 77

Difficult Decision: Hip Hop Public Health and the American Beverage Association 86

The Ethics of Leading Politically 91

Waiving Ethics 94

An Exercise in Exceptions 96

Ethics and Judgement 98

An Ethics Exercise 100

Reflection Questions 101

Difficult Decision: Bigger or Better? Leading for the Enterprise at Shire Pharmaceuticals 102

Key Points 106

Chapter 5: Role Responsibilities 108

Who You Are Charged to Serve 111

Stakeholder Mapping 112

Socioemotional Role 115

Understanding Dynamic Roles 121

Difficult Decision: Breaking Thrivent When It Wasn’t Broken 123

A Role Exercise 128

Difficult Decision: A Hundred Years of Picasso 131

Key Points 136

Chapter 6: Using the Triangle to Make Difficult Decisions 138

The Tissue Test 143

Triangle Touchpoint: Brilliant Jerks 145

Key Points 149

Chapter 7: I Think I Know What I Think; Now What? 151

A Decision-Making Process 151

Difficult Decisions:  The Best Play for Best Buy 155

A View, A Voice, A Vote, or a Veto 164

Delegating 167

Facts vs. Feelings 169

Tools and Muscles 171

Key Points 173

Afterword

Acknowledgments 176

About the Author 180

Endnotes

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