Defining Moments: When Managers Must Choose Between Right and Right by Joseph L. Badaracco Jr.

The commercial tells us life is messy.  More than that it can be destructive.  For centuries philosophers, statesmen and clergy have sought to give us theories to handle the vagaries of life with certainty.  But they suffer from not being encompassing, and worse they are generally sterile thought experiments that do not work in the real world.

Joseph Badaracco wrote this book to provide managers practical guidance for making decisions when the courses of action are all the right thing to do within competing values.  He argues that these right versus right decisions are not well addressed by what he calls the “standard answers” of “follow the law, serve the shareholders, consult the company credo, do the right thing…” (Badaracco, 1997, p. ix).

Book - How We Decide

Adapted from Amazon.com:

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Since Plato, philosophers have described the decision making process as either rational or emotional: we carefully deliberate or we "blink" and go with our gut. But as scientists break open the mind’s black box, they’re discovering that is not how the mind works. Our best decisions are a finely tuned blend of both feeling and reason—; the precise mix depends on the situation. The trick is to determine when to lean on which. Jonah Lehrer arms us with the tools we need, drawing on cutting-edge research as well as the real-world experiences...His goal, to answer two questions: How does the human mind make decisions? And how can we make those decisions better?