029: Minimizing Risk with Decision Science

Making decisions is risky business. As a small business owner, you might not have the deep pockets of a larger enterprise, so making the right decision the first time around can be critical. Decision science gives you the ability to compare multiple ways of solving a problem with the opportunity to add value while minimizing risk and bias. This is Rob Brown’s specialty. In this episode, Rob shares a four-step process to follow that will help you make decisions based on logic and not emotion. Through specific examples, he describes how to use this four-step process to yield the best outcome. Tune in to learn the difference between a decision and an outcome and why, as Rob says, “risk is always in season.”

Special Guest: Robert D. Brown III, President & Founder of Incite! Decision Technologies

Air Date: January 13, 2019

Resources

Business Case Analysis with R: Simulation Tutorials to Support Complex Business Decisions: Rob’s book
Analytica 101: a free application for creating, analyzing and communicating quantitative decision models
Oracle Crystal Ball: a MS Excel plugin to help make the right tactical decisions when facing uncertainty
@RISK: a MS Excel plugin that allows businesses to not only buffer risks, but also identify and exploit opportunities for growth
Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking: book by Malcolm Gladwell
Thinking, Fast and Slow: book by Daniel Kahneman

BONUS:

The TED Talk below features Yassmin Abdel-Magied who gave a powerful presentation on unconscious bias and how it affects our decisions. She not only shares her personal story, but also the 1952 Boston Symphony experiment where they began conducting blind auditions as an attempt to minimize gender bias.