How to Avoid Bad Decisions

A lot of executives and business leaders are looking at the global banking crisis and wondering how did it get this bad? How did qualified business leaders take such risks and lose their shirts on the sub-prime lending market?

Is it a case of 20/20 hindsight, or is there a way to spot bad decisions and avoid them before they become a huge problem?

"Think Again - Why Good Leaders Make Bad Decisions and How to Keep it From Happening to You" by author Sydney Finkelstein is a book that examines the issue of bad decisions in the corporate world. It's an interesting read that explains how flawed pre-judgments, misperceptions and subconscious influences can affect the outcome of decisions that may seem obvious to executives. The book looks at 83 real-world flawed decisions and determines that there are 4 "red flag" conditions in the decision making process that lead to errors in judgment.

Click here to check the book out at Amazon.com.

Innovating Before you need to

In today's economic situation it's difficult to find a story of success, especially one that involves innovation.

Companies are suddenly becoming more cautious about trying new things and innovating on their business models.

Perhaps there are still a few stories of business success out there. The most intriguing elements of these stories of success is they involve businesses that have displayed tremendous amounts of innovation. Innovation that has been engineered well before this current economic downturn.

One such example is Salesforce.com Inc. pursuing a unique business model of Software-as-a-Service that it developed in the years prior to this recent downturn. Challenging the way software is sold and operated was a bold move back then and it's paying big dividends today. Read more about Salesforce.com's success by clicking here.