The Decision Book: Fifty Models for Strategic Thinking

I abandoned this book, but not by choice – truth is, I lost it about 2/3s of the way through (it’s a physically small book, and thus easy to lose).

The book was…okay. True to the tag line, it presents a series of thought models with which to evaluate decisions. Some I had heard of (Pareto, SWOT, etc.) and some were new. Some seemed valuable, others didn’t seem like they had any relevance. There’s very little discussion about each – two pages max, and sometimes just a couple of paragraphs.

Am I better for having read it? I don’t know…maybe? If I hadn’t lost it, it might have come in handy as a reference book. I almost think you need to refer back to it over and over. I could see this as a handy, dog-eared reference until you got the hang of keeping the models in your head and applying them without having to look things up.

That said, I enjoyed reading it. I like the idea of formal thought processes, and the book certainly delivered on that.