I recently completed what I feel is an excellent book about executive decision making, project selection, and project portfolios. The book, A Fish in Your Ear, authored by Micheal Menard, provides an enlightening look into the subject of project selection and how the process can be improved.

The book focuses on the project selection process (what to choose), not the project execution process (how you get it done). It asks some basic but important questions. The quote below comes from the preface of the book:

Thousands of decisions made each day within a company determine to what degree that organization creates or destroys value— decisions such as what new products to develop and launch, what information technology investments to support, what business processes to improve or create, and how to allocate capital to produce the greatest return on investment all have profound impacts on a company’s future success. Few companies have sound, established processes for making these critical portfolio choices. Each time I work with a senior management team, I begin by asking two simple questions:

• “When was the last time you were part of a project-selection or resource-allocation meeting where you were confident the criteria and process being used would deliver the best decisions?”

• “How many of you can think of an active project or initiative that clearly does not deserve the resources being spent on it?”

We invariably get the same responses: the room is silent after the first question, and almost every hand in the room goes up after the second. These are the leaders of major global corporations that have achieved great success, yet they tell us they’re unhappy with their decision-making processes and are wasting resources.

Menard uses his extensive, real world experience to tell the story about how he has developed and used the ideas in the book. This makes for a useful and less theoretical or academic approach to the topic.

I would love your feedback on what you think about the book.