The Decision Maker

Unlock the Potential of Everyone in Your Organization, One Decision at a Time

By: Dennis Bakke

Narrated by: Scott Pollack

Who makes the important decisions in your organization? Strategy, product development, budgeting, compensation - such key decisions typically are made by company leaders. That's what bosses are for, right? But maybe the boss isn't the best person to make the call.

That's the conclusion Dennis Bakke came to, and he used it to build AES into a Fortune 200 global power company with 27,000 people in 27 countries. He used it again to create Imagine Schools, the largest non-profit charter-school network in the U.S.

As a student at Harvard Business School, Bakke made hundreds of decisions using the case-study method. He realized two things: Decision-making is the best way to develop people; and that shouldn't stop at business school. So Bakke spread decision-making throughout his organizations, fully engaging people at all levels. Today, Bakke has given thousands of people the freedom and responsibility to make decisions that matter.

In The Decision Maker, a leadership fable loosely based on Bakke's experience, the New York Times bestselling author shows us how giving decisions to the people closest to the action can transform any organization.

The idea is simple.

The results are powerful.

When leaders put real control into the hands of their people, they tap incalculable potential. The Decision Maker, destined to be a business classic, holds the key to unlocking the potential of every person in your organization.

©2013 Dennis Bakke (P)2013 Pear Press

Feels like an ABC Family broadcast

Love the ideas, but the story and narrator are way too vanilla. I recommend Teams of Teams in its place.

Enjoyable, inspiring, and informative

best business book read more like a novel. It created enjoyable read while at the same time setting down the principles the author desired to communicate. It did not take long to finish, it was an easy read, and it has cast a vision for me concerning my organization.

Very easy listen!!

I like how the book used the characters to bring home the points about delegation is not abdication.

Very easy listen! Enjoyed it so much - I wish there was a part 2!!

An insightful fable about running a tech business

The ideas behind the decision maker process are excellent.
Being a fable, the book is lacking the theoretical ideas behind the process. The story is also a little naïve to reflect real life situations.
The flow of dialogues is, at times, awkward. And there are too many irrelevant data to my liking, such as the appearance of persons and such.
The reading has many pauses. It worked for me when I upped the speed to 1.8 to get a better sense of the flow of the story.