Managing in the Gray: Five Timeless Questions for Resolving Your Toughest Problems at Work

How to Resolve the Really Hard Problems Every manager makes tough calls--it comes with the job. And the hardest decisions are the "gray areas"--situations where you and your team have worked hard to find an answer, you've done the best analysis you can, and you still don't know what to do. But you have to make a decision. You have to choose, commit, act, and live with the consequences and persuade others to follow your lead. Gray areas test your skills as a manager, your judgment, and even your humanity. How do you get these decisions right? In Managing in the Gray, Joseph Badaracco offers a powerful, practical, and even radical way to resolve these problems. Picking up where conventional tools of analysis leave off, this book provides tools for judgment in the form of five revealing questions. Asking yourself these five questions provides a simple yet profound way to broaden your thinking, sharpen your judgment, and develop a fresh perspective. What makes these questions so valuable is that they have truly stood the test of time--they've guided countless men and women, across many centuries and cultures, to resolve the hardest questions of work, responsibility, and life. You can use the five-question framework on your own or with others on your team to help you cut through complexities, understand critical trade-offs, and develop workable solutions for even the grayest issues.

About the Author :
Joseph L. Badaracco is the John Shad Professor of Business Ethics at Harvard Business School, where he has taught courses on leadership, strategy, corporate responsibility, and management in the school's MBA and executive programs. His books on these subjects include Defining Moments and the New York Times bestseller Leading Quietly.

Review :
"... the book is a ray of sunshine amid the deluge of management and business books focused on technology's transformation of work...Managing in the Gray reminds us that many aspects of work will be unchanged and that human problems will persist." -- The Financial Times Badaracco... has been writing about leadership integrity, responsibility, and ethics since the 1980s. He does so in a nuanced and empathetic manner that clearly recognizes the challenges and conflicts routinely faced by well-meaning managers as they strive to make decisions. -- strategy+business magazine, "Best Business Books of 2016," Management "Managing in the Gray provides you with the questions and tools for judgment you need to develop good processes that will help you make it through the gray areas of management. He doesn't provide any easy answers, because there aren't any. Instead, he gives us a "guide for action" and a reminder that, while the world can be messy and unforgiving, we don't have to be." -- 800 CEO READ, Editor's Choice "A fascinating book...clearly written and each question is addressed both philosophically and practically." -- The Globe & Mail "... an outlook that is simultaneously sobering and uplifting." -- BizEd magazine "These are big questions that every leader could benefit from. However they're not just for leaders. Strong, resilient brands are the result of everyone in the organisation thinking and acting as people first. And one of the best ways to unleash our "peopledom" is to ask and talk about big questions together. Books that truly help do this deep work are hard to find. I think Managing the Gray will join the ranks of the few I regularly reference and recommend." -- Smart Company Magazine, Australia ADVANCE PRAISE for Managing in the Gray: Clayton Christensen, Professor, Harvard Business School; author, The Innovator's Dilemma and How Will You Measure Your Life?-- "This wonderful book is a graduate course in the science of thinking. It is rigorous and enjoyable." Jamie Dimon, Chairman and CEO, JPMorgan Chase & Co.-- "Anyone will learn from the critical questions and useful tools of deliberation and judgment revealed in Managing in the Gray." Debora Spar, President, Barnard College-- "Badaracco advises managers on not just how to think about vexing problems, but also how to fix them." Kazuhiro Tsuga, President, Panasonic-- "All business leaders, whatever their managerial problems, will find much to stimulate their thinking in this book." Kevin Sharer, former Chairman and CEO, Amgen; Senior Lecturer, Harvard Business School-- "Managing in the Gray provides a practical, nuanced, and comprehensive framework to grapple with the toughest questions of life and business." Gail McGovern, President and CEO, American Red Cross-- "Badaracco provides a useful and profound guide to dealing with problems that fall into gray areas. Interesting, practical, and compelling."