Effective Decisions

Saumya Bhattacharya expressed her thoughts on how to come up with effective decisions and how to prevent its downsides. She quoted the source from the book of Michael J. Mauboussin, Chief Investment Strategist and a Professor of Finance at Columbia Business School, called Think Twice—Harnessing the Power of Counterintuition. Mauboussin’s first step is to have enough knowledge in the situation that you have. This would help in making effective decisions if you are understand what you are getting into. He mentioned an example of Stephen Greenspan that confirms that sometimes it is better to be wise rather than being just intelligent. Essentially, he mentioned having a decision-making journal, that whenever you have an important decision to make, you can write the decisions you have come up, how you arrived at it, and assume what are the effects of your decisions. Changing voices especially writing was challenging. It can be intimidating because it is not a common way of expressing to us non-writers. Eventually, we have to get used to in a business writing way and even scholarly way. Both are essential because in writing you have to consider your readers and what level of knowledge they can comprehend. Sometimes we tend to overly express our thoughts through fancy words that lead to deviation in the main thought, unclear message, and disorganized thoughts. To avoid this, you must be brief, use familiar vocabulary and must be logical. I can classify the differences of business writing vs. scholarly writing into three categories: purpose, format, and its readers. In business writing, you are trying attain specific goal to complete a job while scholarly writing also known as academic writing that is commonly used in academic fields. It is usually based upon research of the chosen subject. Business writing often has a brief content like memos, reports and evaluations. In academic writing, we have essays, term papers and lab reports that are usually required to have extensive research and good sources. Scholarly writing can be used to support managerial writing because it is usually based on research and mostly written by experts. Sometimes you might need to have a good source that can prove your statement correct or to prove others’ statement wrong or vice-versa. Whether you used scholarly or business writing, as long as you keep it simple, clear, and consistent, your readers will understand what you are trying to convey. References Bhattacharya, S (March 7, 2010). HOW TO DECIDE EFFECTIVELY. Business Today, Vol. 19 Issue 5, p157-157. Retrieved from http://ehis.ebscohost.com.ezp.waldenulibrary.org/ehost/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?sid=968c482b-8197-48ac-9de1-e51638e99332%40sessionmgr112&vid=2&hid=101 University of Houston-Victoria. ACADEMIC VS. BUSINESS WRITING. Retrieved from http://www.uhv.edu/ac/business/academic.aspx (July 18, 2013) Walden University (2013). SCHOLARLY WRITING. Retrieved from http://writingcenter.waldenu.edu/312.htm (July, 18, 2013) May, Claire and May, Gordon (2012). EFFECTIVE WRITING A HANDBOOK OF ACCOUNTANTS. One Lake Street, Upper Saddle River, New Jersey 07458: Prentice Hall. Ask.com. Retrieved from http://www.ask.com/question/what-is-scholarly-writing (July 18, 2013)