Harvard Business Review Press
Managing in the Gray: Five Timeless Questions for Resolving Your Toughest Problems at Work
Key Metrics
- Joseph L Badaracco
- Harvard Business Review Press
- Hardcover
- 9781633691742
- 9.3 X 6.3 X 1 inches
- 1 pounds
- Business & Economics > Decision Making & Problem Solving
- English
Secure TransactionBook Description
Every manager makes tough calls--it comes with the job. And the hardest decisions are the gray areas--situations where you and your team have worked hard to find an answer, you've done the best analysis you can, and you still don't know what to do. But you have to make a decision. You have to choose, commit, act, and live with the consequences and persuade others to follow your lead. Gray areas test your skills as a manager, your judgment, and even your humanity. How do you get these decisions right?
In Managing in the Gray, Joseph Badaracco offers a powerful, practical, and even radical way to resolve these problems. Picking up where conventional tools of analysis leave off, this book provides tools for judgment in the form of five revealing questions. Asking yourself these five questions provides a simple yet profound way to broaden your thinking, sharpen your judgment, and develop a fresh perspective. What makes these questions so valuable is that they have truly stood the test of time--they've guided countless men and women, across many centuries and cultures, to resolve the hardest questions of work, responsibility, and life.
You can use the five-question framework on your own or with others on your team to help you cut through complexities, understand critical trade-offs, and develop workable solutions for even the grayest issues.
Author Bio
Joseph L. Badaracco is the John Shad Professor of Business Ethics at Harvard Business School. He has taught courses on business ethics, strategy, and management in the School's MBA and executive programs.
Badaracco is a graduate of St. Louis University, Oxford University, where he was a Rhodes scholar, and Harvard Business School, where he earned an MBA and a DBA. In recent years, Professor Badaracco served as Chair of the MBA Program and as Housemaster of Currier House in Harvard College. He has also been chairman of the Harvard University Advisory Committee on Shareholder Responsibility and has served on the boards of two public companies. Badaracco has taught in executive programs in the United States, Japan, and many other countries and has spoken to a wide variety of organizations on issues of leadership, values, and ethics. He is also the faculty chair of the Nomura School of Advanced Management in Tokyo.
Badaracco's current research focuses on what counts as sound reflection for busy men and women who have serious responsibilities and face hard, practical problems. He has written several books on leadership, decision-making, and responsibility. These include Defining Moments: When Managers Must Choose between Right and Right, Leading Quietly: An Unorthodox Guide to Doing the Right Thing, Questions of Character, and The Good Struggle: Responsible Leadership in an Unforgiving World. These books have been translated into ten languages.
Badaracco has three children and lives with his wife, Patricia O'Brien, in Brookline, Massachusetts.
Source: Harvard Business School
Videos
Community reviews
Write a ReviewNo Community reviews