Strategic Decision-Making for Leaders

Alberto Feduzi: “My name is Alberto Feduzi, and I’m a Management Practice Associate Professor in the Organisational Behaviour group here at Cambridge Judge Business School (CJBS). I’m interested in how individuals make decisions in situations of extreme uncertainty, where the information is highly ambiguous and incomplete. Unknown unknowns and Black Swans are rampant, and time is of the essence.”

Christoph Loch: “Hello. My name is Christoph Loch. I’m a Professor of Operations and Technology Management here at CJBS. I have worked for the last 35 years on issues of innovation. And for 10 years, I was the Dean of the School.”

Vincent Mak: “I’m Vincent Mak. I’m a Professor of Marketing and Decision Sciences at Cambridge Judge Business School, University of Cambridge, where I’m also currently the Vice Dean for Programmes and Research.”

Alberto Feduzi: “Organisational leaders are called to make decisions in different contexts, and so they face different types of challenges. And these challenges happen at 3 different levels; at an individual’s level where leaders are called to adapt their decision styles depending on the situation they are facing.”

Christoph Loch: “The second module is about the social level. Our decisions are influenced by the people around us. If I secretly don’t respect you, even though I may not even be conscious of that myself, I may make a decision that pertains to you in a different way than if I respect you very much. And our decisions are also influenced by the culture surrounding us. The second module will give us tools to understand this and improve.”

Vincent Mak: “Finally, we will be exploring making decisions at the market level where competitors and other stakeholders interact and a decision that you make could have an implication on many people. And they will respond in a way that would, in turn, affect you. We will try to understand how to make the best decisions in those situations, starting from making decisions in a highly intense competitive scenario, as well as making decisions where you work with a large group of people in a multinational team to co-ordinate, to work together.”

Alberto Feduzi: “In this programme, we will cover all the different levels and will build on each other to provide you with the general framework for making decisions in situations of extreme uncertainty.

“The programme is highly interactive. In order to provide the raw material for discussion in class, we will use a number of tools, including simulation, self-assessment, case studies and exercises.

“The discussion will allow us to bring to class our own experiences. We create a learning environment in class that allows for people to feel free to share their own experience with the others so that we can all learn from each other.”

Christoph Loch: “This programme – you will not really find anything like this anywhere else, this combination of decision making topics. When you normally look at decision making, people will take a more normative, or simply descriptive approach of this is how people make decisions. But to dissect where the levels of vulnerability are, this is unique, or close to unique. I think that’s a reason to consider this.

“I think the second reason is frankly the team of faculty. You have 3 people who are very different, who have different expertise, but shifted from each other with some overlap. And that allows us to combine and create something, which actually integrates these very different levels of views, the competitive macro level, the social cultural level, as well as the individual level. And as a result, you get something powerful that you can take home, and that you can use as a lens to look at decisions being made in your organisations from angles that you were never aware of.

Alberto Feduzi: “I hope we will see you soon in Cambridge.”

Vincent Mak: “Looking forward to seeing you in Cambridge.”