Decision making under uncertainty

The article presents four simple ways for business leaders to make better decisions, explaining how to: take yourself out of the issue; limit the data you consider; consider two options; and imagine the event taking place.

Entrepreneurs often face what feel like impossible or unknowable choices. Marc Randolph shares three decision-making tricks he relied upon as cofounder and CEO of Netflix - and that he still uses today. These include the 'one-way or two-way door decisions' identified by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos.

The authors discuss how CFOs and boards can support strategic resiliency and risk management skills as core competencies for creating and protecting long-term value. In a conversation together, they look at tools for long-term value creation, cybersecurity and resiliency, strategic resiliency and risk assessment, reputation risk, skills for business leaders, strategic life-cycle analysis and lessons on resiliency from bank failures.

Most companies have stuck with conventional techniques for strategy-making. In this article the authors describe what it takes to produce great results during economic uncertainty, and propose a practical model for strategy development that they have seen work at several leading companies.