The Secret to Making Difficult Decisions

Management decisions almost always involve uncertainty. But what if you just can’t get the facts you need—or if your colleagues disagree about what you should decide?

Harvard Business School professor Joseph Badaracco calls these “gray area problems.” He offers a framework for addressing these problems in his book, Managing in the Gray: Five Timeless Questions for Resolving Your Toughest Problems at Work.

“Get expert advice. Look at options with other people, work the process. Be a good manager. And sometimes, you get an answer,” he explains. “But if [you don’t], then you’ve got to make the decision. And you can’t rely on analytics or frameworks. You make that judgment call as who you are. And then you live with it afterwards.”

In this episode, you’ll learn which questions to ask yourself as you work through your own gray area problems. You’ll also learn how to balance your business acumen with the needs of your organization and your human instincts.

Key episode topics include: leadership, decision making and problem solving, business ethics, uncertainty, disagreement, tough decisions, complexity.

HBR On Leadership curates the best case studies and conversations with the world’s top business and management experts, to help you unlock the best in those around you. New episodes every week.

• Listen to the original HBR IdeaCast episode: Making the Toughest Calls (2016)
• Find more episodes of HBR IdeaCast
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