Indies Education · Business Curriculum
Decision Making
Use evidence, explicit trade-offs, and review loops to make better calls under uncertainty.
Project Close Activities: Practical Project Guide
A rigorous guide to close a project without abandoning obligations, knowledge, benefits, records, or residual risks. Learn the core concepts through a distinct operating model, worked business case, measurement system, 90-day action plan, practitioner checklist, ethical limits, and field exercises designed for managers.
Rationalize Your Project Portfolio Responsibly
A rigorous, practical guide to turn a crowded project inventory into a coherent portfolio by testing strategic contribution, value, risk, dependency, capacity, option value, and stopping discipline. It combines a defensible decision model, a worked business case, implementation steps, measurement architecture, ethical guardrails, leadership questions, and field exercises for operators who need to turn analysis.
Organize Team Decision Making for Better Results
A rigorous, practical guide to organize collective choices through clear decision rights, relevant participation, shared evidence, independent judgment, structured dialogue, commitment, and review. It combines a defensible decision model, a worked business case, implementation steps, measurement architecture, ethical guardrails, leadership questions, and field exercises for operators who need to turn analysis into coordinated action.
The Delphi Method: Design, Consensus, and Evidence
The Delphi method gathers expert judgment across iterative questionnaire rounds with controlled feedback. This chapter explains when Delphi is appropriate, panel selection, anonymity, round design, evidence briefs, consensus definitions, qualitative synthesis, attrition, stability, disagreement, reporting, ethics, and how to translate expert judgment into accountable decisions.
How Good Are Your Project Management Skills?
A serious project-management self-assessment examines evidence from live decisions and outcomes rather than producing a flattering personality score. This chapter offers a capability model, behavioral rubrics, artifact review, multisource feedback, simulation, development experiments, safeguards, and a 90-day growth plan.
The Stepladder Technique for Better Group Decisions
The Stepladder Technique structures how members enter a decision discussion so each person contributes before being influenced by the existing group. This chapter explains independent preparation, core-pair formation, sequential entry, evidence capture, order effects, hierarchy, remote adaptation, decision rules, validation, and limits.
Avoiding Groupthink: Build Decisions That Invite Dissent
Groupthink describes a pattern in which pressure for agreement undermines realistic appraisal. This chapter examines the theory and its criticisms, conformity, shared-information bias, authority, escalation, authentic versus assigned dissent, red teams, premortems, independent estimates, decision records, and safeguards for high-quality group choice.
Hartnett’s Consensus-Oriented Decision-Making Model
Hartnett’s Consensus-Oriented Decision-Making model guides groups from framing and open discussion through proposal development, concern testing, modification, decision, and implementation. This chapter explains its seven steps, consensus meaning, facilitation, stand-asides and objections, authority, evidence, accessibility, power, failure modes, and responsible use.
Cautious or Courageous? Calibrate Business Risk
A rigorous, practical guide to calibrate boldness to stakes, reversibility, downside, evidence, option value, and organizational resilience rather than rewarding fear or bravado. It combines a defensible decision model, a worked business case, implementation steps, measurement architecture, ethical guardrails, leadership questions, and field exercises for operators who need to turn analysis into coordinated action.
Howard Marks’ Second-Level Thinking Skills
A rigorous, practical guide to reason beyond the obvious first-order story by examining expectations, market price, consensus, second-order consequences, probabilities, asymmetry, and what must already be believed. It combines a defensible decision model, a worked business case, implementation steps, measurement architecture, ethical guardrails, leadership questions, and field exercises for operators who need to turn analysis.
Blindspot Analysis: Find What Decisions Miss
A rigorous, practical guide to identify systematically unseen risks, assumptions, stakeholders, incentives, data gaps, and failure paths through structured external challenge and evidence. It combines a defensible decision model, a worked business case, implementation steps, measurement architecture, ethical guardrails, leadership questions, and field exercises for operators who need to turn analysis into coordinated action.
Critical Thinking for Better Business Decisions
A rigorous, practical guide to evaluate claims, evidence, assumptions, alternatives, inference, and consequences with disciplined openness rather than reflexive scepticism. It combines a defensible decision model, a worked business case, implementation steps, measurement architecture, ethical guardrails, leadership questions, and field exercises for operators who need to turn analysis into coordinated action.