The Go Point: When It's Time to Decide--Knowing What to Do and When to Do It

I finally had the chance to sit down with Michael Useem's newest book, The Go Point. I am really interested in his work and enjoyed several of his earlier books including Upward Bound: Nine Original Accounts of How Business Leaders Reached Their Summits (with Paul Asel), Leading Up: How to Lead Your Boss So You Both Win and The Leadership Moment: Nine True Stories of Triumph and Disaster and Their Lessons for All of Us. Michael Useem is the Wiliam and Jacalyn Egan Professor of Management at the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, as well as the director of its Center for Leadership and Change Management. In October 2005, I had the good fortune to participate in Wharton's Executive Education Program The Leadership Journey which is lead by Professors Useem and Greg Shea. As its name implies, its is a weeklong intensive experience uniquely exploring leadership from academic and personal perspectives. This was clearly one of the most significant adult learning experiences that I have ever had and I was looking forward to reading The Go Point. Well, I was not disappointed. I really enjoyed this book and, not surprisingly, part of the reason is that it followed much of the same format and covered similar material as The Leadership Journey. The full title is The Go Point - When It's Time to Decide, Knowing What to Do and When to Do It and Useem effectively uses storytelling techniques to explore how decisions are made and to present his case. In the preface, he describes "go points" as "times to decide, moments for saying yes or no, instants for jumping in one direction or another when the fate of others depends on it." He lays out the book's objective of "building a decision-making template, the principles and tools for being decisive at times when it really counts: using small steps to make hard decisions, building a network of counselors for testing ideas, keeping options open until they must be closed." And in the Introduction he defines a go point as - "that decisive moment when the essential information has been gathered, the pros and cons weighed and the time has come to get off the fence.' The author uses a number of interesting and impactful case studies including the July 1994 wildfire on Colorado's Storm King Mountain which had fatal consequences for 14 wildland firefighters, the Gettysburg Battle of the American Civil War that took more than 50,000 Confederate and Union soldiers lives over 3 days, and the 1972 plane crash in the Andes where 16 passengers survived in the incredibly harsh environment with virtually no resources for 72 days. There are lots of lessons to learn from analyzing the decision chains that lead to the final outcome in each story. Useem uses each to demonstrate the importance of having a decision template "generic enough to apply to many situations, yet specific enough to provide real guidance with real-life choices." What has always interested my in Professor Useem's work is how experience informs leader

The GO Point by Michael Useem is a book you should read. Thousands of business books are published every year. A few hundred offer important insights. Another few hundred are easy and fun to read. This is the first business book I've read in a long time that meets all my criteria for a great business book *It is about an important business topic: decision making. *It is based on solid research. *It covers a broad range of applications. *It uses stories and examples to make it easy to read and learn. *It uses structured writing to group key points and makes them usable. At the outset, Useem tells us that he'll do two things in the book. First, he'll take us inside the heads of decision makers. Some of those are living people that Useem has interviewed. Others are historical figures like Robert E. Lee. Useem takes us inside those head by means of stories, the way that humans have always shared experience with each other. This book is filled with great and useful stories because Useem has developed a vast fund of stories and because he is one of the best storytellers among current management writers. In addition to the stories, Useem has created "templates" for handling different decision challenges. He groups the key learning points together, using a technique called structured writing to make the points easy to select and use. Each template is devoted to a specific kind of decision challenge. The bulk of the book lays out the challenges, beginning with urgent decisions. Urgent decisions are decisions that must be made right away. Useem covers those in the chapter called "In the Heat of the Moment." The chapter called "Getting into the Decision Game" addresses a common problem: how do you know when it's time to act? You'll pick up tips on when to quit gathering information and plunge ahead with a decision and when to hold off making a decision until you understand the situation better. "Using the Net" doesn't have anything to do with computers. Instead it's about using advisors to gather both information and perspective. There's some especially insightful material on using an "outer network" of advisors to avoid groupthink. The chapter on "Seeing Ahead" addresses issues of prediction. Useem uses decisions made at the battle of Gettysburg to show how each decision affects the possible range and importance of future decisions. The chapter called "Making Decisions" offers an opportunity for you to try your hand at applying the lessons presented in earlier chapters. Useem stresses the importance of making a decision and moving ahead when the time is right. This chapter is one of the things that make this book both valuable and useful. The final chapters in the book cover special situations. There's a chapter on ethics called "Transcending Personal Profit" and an excellent chapter on the dumb things that smart decision makers often do. That one's called "Avoiding Unforced Errors." Michael Useem has created a book that you

Michael Useem is a fine storyteller. And he is an instructor who can clearly delineate the principles and processes of the subject he is teaching. He combines his abilities to create a high-impact learning experience in one book. Experiential learning is the best learning, but you don't have enough time in your life to learn all you need to know from your own immediate experience. However you can learn most of what you need to know from the experience of others. This book contains excellent experience relevant to good decision-making. And it tells of experiences that are in and of themselves exciting and interesting. They are real-life examples of the principles and skills the author is teaching. He seamlessly weaves into his stories his instruction of the principles and skills of making good decisions. Then, at the end of each chapter, he offers a chart of those principles and skills for your review, relating them back to the stories. So you get "this is why 1,2,3...this is how 1,2,3..and this is what success and or failure looks like in real life." All of this is wrapped up in a presentation that reads like a novel. This book is a must-have for leaders and decision-makers of all kinds. it is enjoyable to read, and everyone will learn something new and useful from it.

The art of being decisive is one of the most daunting skills an individual can acquire. Some decisions require split-second reactions; others are made with the "luxury" of consideration. Both types often carry awesome implications for careers, organizations or families. Michael Useem, a management professor at the Wharton School, dissects this moment of truth, the moment when you have to say "yes" or "no" in his book The Go Point. Using vivid narratives he places the reader in the middle of people facing critical decisions. People, whose action or lack thereof, will have profound implications. Readers find themselves enveloped: * With Robert E. Lee as he orders his General George picket to make an almost suicidal charge against the Union lines in Gettysburg. * On the face of a mountain with the leader of a firefighting crew making life-or-death decisions without critical information about weather patterns. * In the office of a newly appointed head of a scandal-wracked corporation tottering on the brink of disaster. Using decision templates rooted in tangible experiences accompanied by decision tools Useem analyzes these difficult moments. Out of his discussion emerges sound advice for spanning the "knowing-doing gap." Well-written and deceptive in its simplicity, this is one of the finest and most practical books I have read on decision making. Don't hesitate; go read it.

Facing a major decision in your life? Pick up a copy of "The Go Point"! Michael Useem explores the process of how leaders make decisions, that is, to go or not go. The way he does it is masterful. "The Go Point" operates on three levels: one, it's a terrific narrative; two, it is an exploration of the decision-making process from a leadership perspective; and three, it's a self-paced course in decision-making. The leaders Useem profiles are taken from the front and the back pages of history, business and current events. All the leadership stories works to illuminate the factors that go into decisions. An added plus is that each chapter ends with a summary of points that identify key aspects to decision-making that readers are encouraged to discover from the narrative and then compare to the printed results. "The Go Point" is a book that every decision-maker at every level will want to read, study, and put into practice. It is a treasure.