How Leaders Decide: Tackling Biases and Risks in Decision-making by Harjeet Khanduja – Book Review

Harjeet Khanduja’s books are always productive, written in simple language, rich in facts and research, and extremely useful for the readers intended. His latest book, How Leaders Decide: Tackling Biases in Decision-making, reflects on the practices of decision-makers in extremely tense corporate scenarios. Those who lead big organisations and run the companies make many decisions daily. Some of them are major, and some are minor. Major or minor, decisions are extremely important for the overall growth of the company. And this is what the author highlights in his book. 

Harjeet Khanduja is in a leading position with a reputed company Reliance Jio. He is the VP of HR. Before his current position, he has also worked in many other companies in many roles. The book can be said to be a result of his personal experiences in the corporate sector. Moreover, the book also appears to exhibit that the author has not only relied on his experiences. He has also included historic examples, concurrent scenarios and the reactions of the business leaders to the opportunities in sight, and also the blunders that led many leading companies in a negative direction. Overall, this book warns about what bad decisions can do and motivates by showing the progress a good decision maker can bring. 

The book has five parts and twenty-five chapters. Every part of the book contains five chapters. It is apparent, once you look at the contents of the book, the book is written in a progressive order – a reader will get introduced to the organisational decision-making first, then to the types of organisational decisions, then to the barriers to good decision-making and then, finally, to the execution of the decisions taken. The author has used examples, analogies, current affairs, success and failures of the past, and research findings to prove his points. The book is rich not only in terms of concrete knowledge that a reader will get but also in terms of reliable inputs that one can use to find the best ideas for organisational decisions. 

The book has been endorsed by many leading voices in the current corporate sector, including a very rich foreword by the business leader Harsh Goenka. It shows the importance of this title by Harjeet Khanduja. 

Once you start reading the book, you will observe that the author has cited very important, persuasive and popular examples – Cafe Coffee Day’s failure or Paytm’s success, Zapposs’ use of the internal communication channels to apprise the stakeholders before any key decision, the advantages that leading companies like Amazon and TED take when it comes to messaging and keeping it short, the example of Nokia’s failure to acknowledge Symbian OS’ collapse against IOs in understanding the Ostrich Effect… so on and so forth… there are many examples in the book that make things crystal clear and convenient to understand for the readers. 

In short, How Leaders Decide by Harjeet Khanduja will help the employees in leading positions or the aspiring business leaders in understanding the importance of decision-making, the best practices to follow and the worst ones to avoid, the reasons behind indecisiveness and many other aspects of decision making. And the book does so in a very effective way! 

There is nothing that pulls the book down on any front. The publication team has done a very good job in making the book visually appealing. The author has done his part extensively well. If you want to know about decision-making from a current leader in the corporate sector, this book is the destination for now! You can grab a copy from Amazon India using the link below. 

Get a copy from Amazon India now – click here to buy