The Right Decision Every Time: How to Reach Perfect Clarity on Tough Decisions - Hardcover

Kopeikina, Luda

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0131862626 ISBN 13: 9780131862623

Publisher: Pearson P T R, 2005

Synopsis

Drawing on her breakthrough research with 115 CEOs, Luda Kopeikina offers practical, proven techniques for structuring decisions, achieving clarity about the real issues involved, and using that clarity to improve the quality of every decision you make. Kopeikina begins by defining clarity in decision-making, identifying five root causes for decision difficulty, and introducing the “Clarity State”: that singular moment of focus where things fall into place, and solutions become obvious. Next, she introduces a set of powerful techniques for overcoming decision difficulties, stripping away decision complexity, and achieving the Clarity State. Kopeikina concludes with a detailed case study tracing how real executives use these techniques to make crucial strategic decisions.

About this title

About the Author

Luda Kopeikina is a Visiting Scholar at the MIT Sloan School of Management and CEO of Noventra Corporation, an innovation commercialization firm. Ms. Kopeikina spent six years at General Electric in various vice presidential positions, where she had an opportunity to work with Jack Welch and observe his methods in action. Later, she was President and CEO of Celerity Solutions, Inc., a publicly traded company. Under her leadership, the company executed a complete turnaround in two years and grew six-fold. Interactive Week's 1998 Executive Worth Survey ranked Ms. Kopeikina within the top 20 CEOs of U.S. high-tech public companies for her performance and total return to shareholders.

Ms. Kopeikina is an entrepreneur who started two successful companies. She enjoys working with entrepreneurs and helping businesses prosper. She is a Chairman of MIT Enterprise Forum of South Florida, a nonprofit organization that promotes entrepreneurship. She also serves on the Board of Directors of several companies.

Ms. Kopeikina holds a master's degree from MIT's Sloan School of Management as a Sloan Fellow. She also holds a master's degree in computer science from St. Petersburg University, Russia, where she completed a Ph.D. thesis in computer science.

© Copyright Pearson Education. All rights reserved.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

00Kopeikina_FM.qxd

Introduction

I first became interested in the link between the state of mind and effective decision-making early in my life when I faced a personal tough choice of leaving the Soviet Union in the early 1980s. The question was whether I was willing to abandon my comfortable life, a high-level position at the top university, and leave the country alone, pregnant, with only ninety dollars in my pocket and forty pounds of luggage, or to stay and "act within the limits" imposed by the regime.

I wondered then why some decisions are more difficult than others and how people make such tough choices effectively. Is there a state of mind that enables us to make tough decisions easier? I questioned. Through my executive career, I watched master decision makers whom I chanced to meet, especially at General Electric, where I was privileged to become a VP, eager to learn more about the link between the state of mind and effective decision-making. It became clear to me that behind their mastery and ease of making decisions is a discipline, a method, and much introspection and self-improvement that are not visible to the naked eye.

Since then, I studied mind-focusing methods more systematically and applied them to my decision-making as a CEO of a public and then a private company. Research for this book served as a culmination of the exploration into this topic. I worked with over 100 CEO's from companies of various sizes and industries on their current decisions, while a Visiting Scholar at MIT Sloan.

The key to reaching clarity is the ability to focus your physical, mental, and emotional resources, at will, on a certain issue. With this focus, you can identify the right choice faster, more easily, and with greater certainty and internal alignment. It is a practice that can be acquired. This book presents the elements of this practice. The objective of this book is to present techniques that enable you to reach clarity on difficult, strategic decisions with greater effectiveness, thus increasing your decision-making mastery level. This is the book that I wish I could have read at the beginning of my career.

The book defines a Clarity State—a measurable state of mental, physical, and emotional coherence that focuses our inner resources. I found that the combination of the Clarity State with the rigor and discipline of decision-making best practices, utilized by experienced decision makers, has a profound impact on the ability to reach a clear choice in complex situations. This book presents the combination in a practical technique—Clarity State Decision-Making—which can be used by decision makers in small and large organizations alike. Using this process, a stunning 93 percent of CEOs in my test group made clear choices, resolving current decision situations within an hour and a half after focusing on them. Some of these decisions had been pending for weeks or months.

This is truly a new development. Rarely do we know how to summon our internal resources at will, and focus them on an issue to a successful resolution. The approach presented in this book combines traditional, rational ways that we usually use in making decisions, with innovative mind-focusing techniques that enable you to access more brainpower than you normally do.

I invite you to learn and experiment with this technique. Please use this book as a learning tool; choose a current decision that you are working on and take it through the technique. Observe yourself and the level of clarity that you reach with each exercise. Please let me know what you think.

There is no greater reward for an author than to see how people use the book to become better at what they do. If you practice an effective decision-making process, especially by leveraging the Clarity State, you can succeed with consistency. May you have the motivation, creativity, and courage to become a better leader by making more confident, successful, decisions with higher certainty that impact the world in a positive way that is uniquely yours.

Luda Kopeikina

luda@noventra.com

© Copyright Pearson Education. All rights reserved.

Edition details

• Publisher: Pearson P T R
• Publication date: 2005
• ISBN 10: 0131862626
• ISBN 13: 9780131862623
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 270