Why Great Leaders Don’t Take Yes for an Answer: Managing for Conflict and Consensus

Make better decisions! Michael A. Roberto will help you achieve deeper consensus, get past groupthink and ＂yes men,＂ and achieve superior results in every decision you make -- especially your most complex and highest-stakes decisions! Roberto’s Why Great Leaders Don’t Take Yes for an Answer, Second Edition gives you a powerful framework for promoting honest, constructive dissent and skepticism; test your assumptions; more thoroughly and fairly considering ＂best alternatives＂; crisply coming to closure; and aligning your entire organization behind the decision you make.

In this new edition, Roberto presents new cases from Google, Ford, and Intuit, and expands coverage to more deeply illuminate his decision-making approach. Offering both positive and negative examples, he presents a well rounded view of how to determine when ’yes’ means ’yes’, when it doesn’t, and what to do when it doesn’t. Throughout, Roberto demonstrates why ＂good process entails the astute management of the social, political and emotional aspects of decision making＂ -- in other words, why effective leaders are well served by carefully ＂deciding how to decide.＂ You’ll learn how to:

• Test and probe what your team really believes, and get the truth and candor you really need
• Encourage constructive objections -- and keep them constructive
• Improve team management, mitigate risk, identify opportunities, and promote integrity
• Build stronger commitment amongst the people who’ll implement your decisions

Michael Roberto is the Trustee Professor of Management at Bryant University in Smithfield, Rhode Island. He has served on the faculty at Harvard Business School and as a visiting professor at NYU’s Stern School of Business. Over the past decade, Professor Roberto has held a position on the faculty of the Nomura School of Advanced Management in Tokyo, where he teaches an executive program each summer.

Professor Roberto’s previous book, Know What You Don’t Know (Pearson/Financial Times, 2009) addresses how leaders can become more effective problem finders. He has created two best-selling audio and video lecture series for The Great Courses ( The Art of Critical Decision Making , 2009, and Transformational Leadership , 2011). His articles have appeared in publications such as Harvard Business Review , MIT Sloan Management Review , and California Management Review.

Professor Roberto’s research and teaching have earned several major awards. The Everest Leadership and Team Simulation earned an MITX Interactive Award for Best E-Learning Solution in 2011. Columbia’s Final Mission , a multimedia case study about the 2003 space shuttle accident, garnered the software industry’s prestigious Codie Award in 2006. On the teaching front, Professor Roberto is a seven-time winner of the Outstanding MBA Teaching Award at Bryant University. He has been awarded Harvard’s Allyn Young Prize for Teaching in Economics on two occasions. Professor Roberto received an AB with honors from Harvard College, an MBA with High Distinction from Harvard Business School, and a doctorate from the Harvard Business School.

Professor Roberto lives in Massachusetts with his wife, Kristin, and his three children, Luke, Celia, and Grace.