Course Overview

Making decisions is integral to every manager’s job. Making Difficult Decisions: The General Manager’s Role (MDD) explores the kinds of decisions made by general managers (GMs) and how context influences both the nature of the choices to be made and the effectiveness of the decisions taken. The course views management as a crucial activity for enabling coordinated action in pursuit of organizational performance. Our emphasis is on how GMs get things done through making and guiding both larger and smaller decisions. We show how to use decision-making processes to achieve results and to move an organization forward.

The course defines context broadly. The principal focus is on the context surrounding the human group involved. We examine cognitive, interpersonal, and organizational factors that thwart effective decision making and introduce techniques for diagnosing and overcoming predictable pitfalls. Decisions are particularly challenging for general managers because they must rely on others – principally subordinates – to provide important input and data that inform decisions and to implement the choices made. The major constraint facing most managers is not the extent of their vision, but the resources available to them. Therefore, the essence of general management is to understand and fully harness the capabilities of the human resources available. Decision making goes far beyond merely knowing what one wants to accomplish. It requires developing a vision based on a clear-eyed evaluation of the capability of those around you, communicating that to them, gathering and considering their feedback, overseeing implementation and responding to the unexpected.

Making Difficult Decisions places particular emphasis on frameworks that help managers make, communicate, and implement decisions well. These practical management skills include how to craft and interpret dialogue, how to diagnose one's own propensities to reduce the likelihood of error, and how to diagnose group dynamics. The role of incentives – formal and informal, real and imagined – in driving behavior will also be examined. We discuss decision making as a process and describe the major considerations involved in designing such processes. The course does not address decision making tools such as data analytics, game theory, and simulations.

Possessing greater aptitude in and understanding of these issues positions managers to influence the design, direction, and functioning of organizational processes. The aim of MDD is to develop students' understanding of highly relevant, practical skills, and how to use them in day-to-day activities to make better decisions and to improve their own and their team's performance in decision making generally. Throughout, our focus is on high-level processes that are of interest to general managers; for this reason, case protagonists are typically division presidents or higher.

Course Content

A distinctive feature of the course is its variety of teaching materials, including experiential exercises, role-plays, multimedia cases, and visits from case protagonists, in addition to the usual HBS written case studies. Settings are varied as well. They include a wide variety of businesses and industries, ranging from startups to large multinationals and from software development to financial services, life sciences, and manufacturing. MDD also features many non-business protagonists and situations, including presidential taskforces, mountaineering expeditions, hospital administrators, and engineers involved in the space program.

MDD uses three types of sessions, interspersed throughout the semester, to teach a set of related ideas and frameworks.

Session Type I: MDD has 10 HBS Case Study classes – spanning sectors, industries, and organization size. In each, GMs face one or more important decisions, and wrestle with multiple challenges. These cases include traditional paper and multimedia formats. As in any HBS classroom, students are expected to participate regularly and actively in these discussions. Good contributions offer clear, rigorous argument, present detailed substantive recommendations, describe a coherent, internally consistent perspective or point of view, move the discussion forward by posing questions or drawing links between others’ comments, present relevant examples from personal experience or constructively critique positions, sharpen the class’s understanding of issues, or deepen an ongoing debate.

Session Type II: MDD includes 8 “lab sessions” that allow students to practice management skills in realistic simulated conversations. These will come in two forms. In 4 sessions, they will take place in class. Short vignettes will be distributed at the beginning of class, each based on a disguised real-life situation. They present a single situation in an organizational context, with a protagonist who must figure out what to do. Students will experiment, receive real-time feedback from instructors and/or each other, and observe others, all in an effort to develop practical management skills. In 4 other sessions, we conduct in depth role-play exercises in which students work in small groups. These sessions will take place in Batten. Practice and repetition are used to help students understand how to put into action concepts introduced in case discussions and lectures.

Session Type III: The course also includes 8 Dialogues, or conversations with successful GMs, who share their experiences and engage in conversations driven by student questions. We currently anticipate welcoming 10 guests to class, including 8 case protagonists and 2 full session guest dialogues. All will join us in the latter half of the course, when our discussion will turn to means for structuring decision making and the ways in which individual executives approached career-defining decisions.

The principal purpose of the course is to improve students’ ability to make and implement better decisions in the context of often complex interdependencies with others (subordinates, superiors, and even members of other groups or organizations). The course design reflects the following assumptions:

• This ability is relevant to all students and is not strictly the province of general managers.
• Everyone has distinct behavioral and attitudinal ‘footprints’ that shape how we make decisions.
• Being aware of one’s footprint and developing the self-awareness to make better decisions and implement them with more fidelity is a valuable skill for any manager/leader.

Assignments & Grading

The work for MDD includes case preparation, participation in case discussions, and participation in lab sessions; 40% of a student’s grade will be allocated based on participation in class discussions (including dialogue sessions with guests); 20% based on participation in lab sessions, and 40% based on a final written submission. In lieu of a final exam or paper, students are asked to prepare a written self-diagnosis reflecting on – and applying – the frameworks and competencies that they are developing throughout the semester. These submissions, which reflect work done throughout the semester and are not expected to require extensive time after classes end, should address:

• Reflecting on your current decision-making approach and/or behavioral footprint (mindsets and behavioral habits that shape your effectiveness in difficult moments) by reflecting on your previous experiences, or your motivations for taking the course.
• Reacting to situations presented in the 10 HBS case studies—what are the principal lessons you drew from a case or cases? How do you think you would have reacted in the protagonists’ shoes?

• Describing insights taken from lab sessions and experiences trying to apply course frameworks or competencies, such as those of Chris Argyris and David Kantor.
• Developing a personalized "self-awareness" plan of action to use after graduation. Such a plan should include, but not be limited to, reflections on your footprint and identification of "watch outs" or "trigger points" that threaten your ability to be a more effective decision maker, a list of tools and techniques to use in managing decision making processes and in managing difficult conversations and for diagnosing group dynamics.

These foci will constitute the body of submission, which should be developed over the course of the semester. This self-diagnosis will build on and return to notes/ideas produced early in the semester, and reflect on what’s changed, while building a compendium of ideas for how check less productive instincts and overcome shortcomings or weaknesses in interpersonal and other management skills in the months and years ahead.

The purpose of the course is thus to help launch a lifelong learning journey to support ongoing personal and professional development as a manager.

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