Vincent P. Barabba

During his 50-year career as a political strategist, corporate executive and Director of the US Census Bureau, and then as a member of California’s Citizens Redistricting Commission, Vince Barabba learned time and again that successful decisions require a commitment to the effective use of technology and an understanding that change occurs more rapidly with every decade.

In Wise Decision Making, Barabba reflects on that career and shares his insights into the interaction between information providers and the decision-makers who rely on that information – whether in a business environment, a public policy setting or academia. Wise Decision Making draws heavily on the wisdom of Russell Ackoff and Peter Drucker who provided these wise suggestions:

Ackoff: “Management should be directed at the interaction of the parts and not the actions

of the parts taken separately”

Drucker: One cannot make decisions for the future. Decisions are commitments to action.

And actions are always in the present, and in the present only. But actions in the present

are also the one and only way to make the future.

During his wide-ranging career, Barabba benefited from a healthy engagement with many academics, in addition to Ackoff and Drucker, who were as interested in seeing their ideas implemented in the real world as they were in developing them. Those leaders and visionaries include Thomas Davenport, Harold Kassarjian, Ralph Kilman, John Little, Richard Mason, Ian Mitroff, John Pourdehnad, C. K. Prahalad, Everett Rogers, Mal Sillars, Glen Urban, and Jerry Zaltman, among others.

In this in-depth and easy-to-read volume, Barabba shares anecdotes and memories, while laying out what he has learned in government and industry and how others might apply that learning. He then provides a framework for decision-makers of all types to reinvent his tools and recommendations to fit their unique circumstances.