Decision Consulting Workshop (Europe)

The Decision Consulting Workshop is a two-week course for decision process leaders in organizations. This course, designed for individuals and organizations that are building internal decision support groups, gives you hands-on experience learning powerful group facilitation techniques and decision analysis skills needed to guide organizations through complex business decisions. Our goal is to help your organization move away from decision-making based on advocacy by project champions and toward a more collaborative and analytically powerful decision-making process.

This course trains decision leaders and participants in the Dialogue Decision Process, an approach characterized by structured interactions between decision makers and those who support them. The process incorporates problem framing, group facilitation, spreadsheet modeling, decision analysis, and communication with decision makers.

Who Should Attend
This workshop is beneficial to individuals and teams who are responsible for building their company’s internal decision quality capabilities. Participants should have an MBA or equivalent business experience, demonstrated group leadership skills, and expertise in developing spreadsheet models using Excel.

Many participants attend as part of a corporate team; discounts are available for teams registering at the same time.

 

Course Structure
As a participant in this two-week course, you will be immersed in a broad set of organizational and analytical tools used by professional decision consultants. You will work in small teams on a complex decision problem that provides a realistic setting for learning and practicing new skills. You will benefit from the guidance of experienced SDG decision consultants as you work through each step of a simulated consulting engagement, alternatively learning each step, then putting it into practice.

A simulated decision board composed of four of SDG’s most senior decision consultants is convened twice during the course. This gives you and your team a realistic opportunity to present insights and distilled analytic results to executives, to guide productive discussions, and to reach alignment on a course of action.
 

Topics
Week 1, Monday - Friday
Framing, Alternatives, Decision Board Presentation

• Facilitating Dialogue Decision Process project teams
• Framing decision problems
• Developing creative alternatives
• Identifying key uncertainties and relationships
• Preparing effective presentations
• Conducting a "frame and alternatives" dialogue with senior executives

Saturday
Modeling Workshop

• Building spreadsheet-based decision models

Week 2, Monday - Friday
Analysis and Insight

• Interviewing potentially biased experts
• Identifying key sources of value and sources of risk
• Analyzing alternatives using decision analysis software
• Mining the evaluation and results for insights
• Leading decision board discussions of evaluation results

In addition to the covered topics, SDG’s instructors and coaches are available before and after class and during breaks to provide individual attention to specific questions and issues that arise during the course.

 

 

The Decision Consulting Workshop is characterized by engaging classroom discussion and individual coaching led by experienced SDG instructors and coaches. The average participant-instructor ratio is 6:1.

 

“The DCW course provided me the tools, techniques, knowledge, and confidence to address complicated decisions. I highly recommend it to anyone faced with guiding a corporation through a complex series of decisions.”

- MICHAEL SHERIFF, SENIOR PLANNER,
OKLAHOMA GAS & ELECTRIC

 

“You and your team did a fantastic job in the 2 weeks I spent with SDG. Although it was a lot of work, I truly enjoyed how you were able to mix intellectually challenging material with fun—thereby creating a wonderful learning environment.”

— KEVIN LYNCH, MANAGER, DECISION SUPPORT GROUP,
ABBOTT LABORATORIES

 

“What I liked most about DCW was the simulated consulting assignment, with ‘real-life’ practice facilitating, gathering assessments, presenting to credible decision board members, and getting feedback on how we did. This makes the course.”

— DAN JOHNSON, DECISION SCIENTIST,
ELI LILLY AND COMPANY

 

“Takes decision-making techniques out of the classroom and into the boardroom.”

— BERNADETTE WALSH, RISK MANAGER,
UNILEVER