Truth About Making Smart Decisions, The

Praise for
The Truth About Making Smart Decisions

“The Truth About Making Smart Decisions offers a truly valuable and entertaining journey through the complex terrain of decision making. Robert Gunther combines a writer's gift of the pen with a keen understanding of human nature, drawing upon his own experiences, business anecdotes, and vignettes from other walks of life. His selection of traps, insights, and truths are edifying as well as amusing, and many readers will recognize themselves as he exposes our weaknesses, and occasional brilliance, as we carve the trajectory of our life one decision after the next.”

Paul J. H. Schoemaker, Ph.D., coauthor of Decision Traps and Winning Decisions

“Robert Gunther crystallizes years of expertise and insight in business writing into a book on probably life’s most important matter: decision making. How do you do it and how do you do it much better? He offers many tools to organize the mind and maximize your ability to be a leader and money maker.”

Rick Rickertsen, Managing Partner of Pine Creek Partners and author of The Buyout Book and Sell Your Business Your Way

“We make decision errors predictably, and Robert Gunther offers fifty ways of taking decisions more intelligently. The Truth About Making Smart Decisions is a concise and actionable guide for what to consider when facing critical choice points.”

Michael Useem, Ph.D., Wharton Professor of Management and author of The Go Point: When It’s Time to Decide

“If you think decision making is cut and dried, this book will make you think again. In The Truth About Making Smart Decisions, Robert Gunther offers challenging insights on how factors from sleep to intuition to emotions to mental models affect the quality of our decisions. He urges readers to take a broader view and raises issues that anyone should consider in making smarter decisions.”

Yoram (Jerry) Wind, Ph.D., The Lauder Professor and Wharton Professor of Marketing, and coauthor of The Power of Impossible Thinking

Everything you need to know to make smarter, better decisions—in business and in life!

• The truth about learning from your mistakes and those of others

•  The truth about how sleep can help you make better decisions

•  The truth about the power of acting decisively

This book brings together 50 powerful “truths” about making better decisions: real solutions for the tough challenges faced by every decision-maker, in business and in life. You'll discover how to systematically prepare to make better decisions...how to get the right information, without getting buried in useless data...how to minimize your risks, and then act decisively...how to handle your emotions...make better group decisions...profit from mistakes...and a whole lot more. This isn't "someone's opinion": it's a definitive, evidence-based guide to effective decision-making...a set of bedrock principles you can rely on no matter what kind of decisions you make!

Robert E. Gunther is coauthor or collaborator on more than 20 books. Among many projects, he served as collaborating writer on Wharton on Making Decisions and coauthored The Wealthy 100, a ranking of the wealthiest Americans since the start of the country. His books have been translated into more than a dozen languages. He has appeared on CNBC’s Power Lunch, NPR’s Morning Edition, and numerous local and national radio and television programs. His projects also have been featured in The New York Times, Time, USA Today, and Fortune. His columns or articles have been published in Harvard Business Review, American Heritage, Investor’s Business Daily, and The Philadelphia Inquirer.

As founder of Gunther Communications, he has collaborated with leading business professors on books and articles, and engaged in communications work for Fortune 500 companies, universities, and major non-profits. After graduating from Princeton University, he worked as a reporter and editor for The Press of Atlantic City. He later joined the Wharton School where he served as director of development communications and director of publications in executive education. He and his wife have three children and live outside Philadelphia.