OVERVIEW

Leadership Decision Making: Optimizing Organizational Performance offers important new insights into leadership based on breakthrough scientific discoveries about decision making. The goal of the program is to prepare participants with the skills to become effective ‘decision architects’, who design optimal decision making environments within their organizations and improve overall organizational performance.

Tough decisions are the essence of leadership. Using the latest research, case study discussions, and real-time activities in the new Harvard Decision Science Laboratory, program participants will have the opportunity to examine both the scientific basis for and the practical aspects of judgment and decision making, and learn how to build lasting leadership skills that incorporate this knowledge.

World-renowned Harvard faculty members will teach such topics as how to design optimal decision environments in your organization, how to communicate risk effectively, and how to avoid the emotional and cognitive pitfalls that can lead even the most experienced leaders to make mistakes. The program components will provide participants with essential tools for sound executive decision making in a risky world. 

The program will also include an opportunity for self-assessment in the laboratory, where participants will learn more about their own biases, their attitudes toward risk, their ability to regulate emotions, and other key personal insights that can sharpen decision-making.    

Harvard Decision Science Laboratory
Opened in January of 2009, the Harvard Decision Science Laboratory provides state-of-the-art capabilities for faculty and researchers across Harvard University who study how people make judgments and decisions.  This facility, unique among schools of public policy, features thirty-six cubicles, three interview rooms, and a menu of cutting-edge technologies that enable researchers to analyze the link between human physiology and decision-making behaviors.  Custom-designed software integrates recordings of physiologic responses, audio, and video.  Removable partitions offer researchers the ability to run experiments with up to 36 subjects simultaneously.  Executive education groups began using the laboratory in summer 2009, and have responded with great enthusiasm.