Making Decisions

Winning takes many forms. For fans of Matthew Syed, this is a great sports book about leadership, judgement and decision-making – rooted in the theory that helped Ed Smith lead England cricket to sustained success. And to help us all win more.

‘An absolutely fascinating book’ THE GAME, The Times football pod
How do you spot the opportunities that others miss?How do you turn a team’s performance around?How do you make good decisions amid a tidal wave of information? And how can you improve?
As chief selector for the England cricket team, Ed Smith pioneered new methods for building successful teams and watched his decisions tested in real time on the pitch. During his three-year tenure, England averaged 7 wins in every 10 completed matches, better than they have performed before or since.

Making Decisions reveals Smith’s unique approach to finding success in a fast-changing and increasingly data-reliant world. The best decisions, Smith argues, rely on a combination of differing kinds of intelligence: from algorithms to intuition. This is a truth that the most successful people know: data cannot account for everything, it must be harnessed with human insight. Whatever the power of data, humans aren’t finished yet.

Sharing for the first time the tools he introduced as England selector, Smith’s book captures the immediacy of life at the sharp end, while also exploring frameworks from the top levels of sports, business and the arts. Decision-making is revealed as a creative enterprise, not a reductive system.

Making Decisions offers an invaluable guide for those who want a better framework for developing, explaining and implementing new ideas.

About the author

Ed Smith is renowned thinker on the history and culture of sport and leadership.

He is Co-Founder and Director of the Institute of Sports Humanities.

He has written four books, including What Sport Tells Us About Life (Penguin, 2008).

He played cricket for Kent, Middlesex and England and was Chief Selector for England cricket from 2018 to 2021, a period of unprecedented success for England’s men’s teams.

Ed is a Contributing Writer for the New Statesman.