Decision Control – Poker-based decision-making
“A successful business professional or sales manager requires a certain set of skills, and conscious behavior
similar – or even identical – to a professional poker player.”
How does a business professional profit from the knowledge of poker?
Executives, sales managers and poker players face similar decision-making difficulties during their “jobs”. Their
route to success, to reach the expected optimum follows a similar path, which means that their decision-making
models overlap.
The poker table is the market, where the players – just like business decision makers:
-
make decisions about limited resources
by building on limited information
in a competing environment
under time pressure.
Poker and decision
Types of people interested in decision-making situations
Based on their earlier actions, what is their style in approaching decision-making situations, how aggressive, how
predictable are they, and how much do they bluff? How should I build a winning strategy against different
opponents?
Decision-maker resources
How many chips do they have, and how does that relate to my investment options? What is my relative
bargaining position?
The expected value of the situation
What are my chances at each of my decisions to win the game, how much do I profit from my decisions, keeping
the long distance goals in mind?
Evaluating my decisions
What results did I get, in case of being unsuccessful did I make any mistakes, should I change my decision-making
strategy, and if yes, in what ways?
Consciousness instead of routine and emotional impulses
Through the game, participants get to know a new approach of decision-making mechanism, and with the help of
poker, they can examine different decision-making situations and the pitfalls thereof under “laboratory
circumstances”. Following that, decision control can easily be mapped and applied to everyday business
situations.
Who do we recommend the training to?
Since we draw parallels between the basic principles and decision making model of poker with business decisions,
we recommend our program to executives, mid-level managers and sales professionals.
What happens during the training?
After presenting the rules and basic strategies of poker, participants can try how the different decision-making
techniques work in practice, by playing on poker tables against eachother. Participants learn the situation-based
working and avoiding pitfall situations in different decision-making situations through their own experiences.
They learn to calculate their chances, the estimated value of their decisions, and to overtop their desires and
emotional impulses. They deal with emerging defeat experiences, and translate these techniques into their
business and everyday lives. The recommended number of participants is 8-16 people and the duration of the
training is 2 days.
Skills that the training develops
-
Conscious situation evaluation
-
Situation-based decision-making
-
Negotiation technique building
-
Identifying the types of negotiation participants
-
Conflict management