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Behavioral Decision Making

  • Date

    September 11, 2024

  • Time

    8:30 AM – 4:30 PM ET

  • Length

    2 consecutive days

  • Format

    On Campus

  • Cost

    $2,990

  • Registration Deadline

    September 3, 2024

man at desk demonstrating behavioral decision making.

Gain the critical knowledge and tools you need to make smarter decisions for your organization — and yourself.

Behavioral Decision Making Course Overview

How can you, as a leader, make better decisions? Being a leader requires not only the ability to make important decisions independently but also the capacity to influence others’ decisions.

In this program, we will use the frameworks of choice architecture to examine the decision-making process. We’ll study the various ways choices are framed — and how this framing can influence decisions. The topics explored will help you become a better decision maker in your professional life and beyond.

Choice architecture — popularized by economist Richard Thaler and legal scholar Cass Sunstein — was originally designed to influence consumer behavior. But its applications have proven constructive for organizational leaders and managers who need to make and influence important decisions.

Through engaging case studies, discussion, and exercises, you’ll learn when and where flawed thinking can occur, how you can intervene, and how you can ultimately make and influence smarter decisions for your organization.

You will uncover the inner workings of human biases and judgment. And you’ll gain insights into how inherent bias or poorly structured information can affect business decisions. You will learn to recognize these hurdles so you can develop better decision-making outcomes and improve your bottom line.

Program Benefits

  • Explore the fast-growing fields of behavioral economics, behavioral insights, and behavioral decision making — and why they matter
  • Learn how to identify cognitive biases and structure your environment to eliminate destructive bias
  • Discover the psychological factors that drive economic decisions and how they impact your business and bottom line
  • Improve your ability to forecast the outcomes of decisions
  • Understand how to leverage the power of “nudges” and behavioral interventions
  • Understand how heuristics and biases can affect the decisions you make everyday
  • Earn a Certificate of Participation from the Harvard Division of Continuing Education

Topics Covered

Judgment

  • Human biases that affect judgment
  • Conscious and unconscious choice-drivers
  • The effect of emotion on judgment
  • Judgmental errors that plague all organizations
  • Ways to “de-bias” judgment

Decision Making

  • Understanding of choice architecture
  • Exploration of the origins of behavioral decision making
  • Perception of risk, its impact on choices, and how to better communicate it
  • Decision making under uncertainty and what an ideal decision looks like

Choice Architecture in Business

  • How businesses and governments are using behavioral economics to design decision making
  • The promises and pitfalls of forecasting
  • Experimentation and data to optimize performance
  • How to become an effective decision architect by redesigning the decision-making context

Who Should Enroll

This decision making program is applicable to anyone in general management who wants to improve decision making at their organization and positively affect the bottom line.

September Schedule

Day 1

  • Ideal Decision Maker vs. The Real One
  • How Our Minds Betray Us

Day 2

  • Building a De-biasing Toolkit
  • Nudging in the Real World

Instructor

  • J. Peter Scoblic

    J. Peter Scoblic

    Peter is a co-founder and principal of Event Horizon Strategies. He has published widely on strategic foresight, including in The New York Times, Science, Harvard Business Review, and Foreign Affairs. He received is doctorate from Harvard Business School and is a fellow at Harvard’s Kennedy School.

Certificates of Leadership Excellence

The Certificates of Leadership Excellence (CLE) are designed for leaders with the desire to enhance their business acumen, challenge current thinking, and expand their leadership skills.

This program is one of several CLE qualifying programs. Register today and get started earning your certificate.

Learn More