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Decision Making Blueprint Landing Page
Overview
Nobody puts “how we decide” on the agenda
In nearly thirty years of consulting for Fortune 250 companies, universities, and state and city governments, Dr. Sherif Farghal has sat through thousands of meetings. They covered strategy, execution, budgets, and reports. Not once did a client set aside an hour to talk about how the organization makes decisions.
So the biggest calls get made the way they always have. The loudest voice carries the room. Whatever feels urgent pushes aside what matters. A plan that looked good on paper stalls the week after the retreat. In one survey cited in the book, 60 percent of executives said bad decisions in their organizations were about as common as good ones.
The Decision-Making Blueprint gives you the missing process. It walks through the five-step Allovance method, built on Dr. Farghal’s research into measuring subjective judgment, and shows it at work in city halls, utilities, hospitals, and a Caribbean nation rebuilding after a hurricane. Every chapter ends with practical takeaways you can bring to your next planning meeting.
From the Book
What changes when the process changes
The book is built on real engagements. Here are three of them.
Midwest utility
13%
A Midwest utility had to cut its capital budget by 30 percent. Making the cuts the usual way, the team lost more than half of the portfolio’s strategic value. Running the same cuts through the Allovance method, they lost 13 percent.
Development finance board
18 months
A development finance board had been deadlocked for a year and a half. Once projects came off the table and the board settled its priorities first, agreement came quickly. The priorities they chose were nearly identical to what a subcommittee had proposed eighteen months earlier.
Hospital facilities team
8/100
A hospital’s facilities team scored a $113,000 request for a new counter at 8 out of 100, last in the portfolio. Nobody argued with the ranking, because everyone could see how it was reached.
Learning Outcomes
What you will be able to do
By the last chapter, you will be able to:
Spot the forces that quietly shape big decisions: bias, the urgency trap, missing criteria, and the pull of whoever speaks first.
Build a Strategic Value Scorecard of five or so priorities that don’t overlap and don’t leave anything important out.
Weight those priorities by asking which one deserves more of your attention right now, a question that gets honest answers when “what matters most?” gets polite ones.
Turn soft criteria, like community trust or a team’s gut feeling, into clear low, medium, and high scales anyone can score against.
Score every option against the same yardstick and see which are valuable, which are urgent, and which are simply hard.
Explain every funding decision, including the ones that disappoint people, with reasoning your stakeholders can follow.
Who This Book Is For
For the people who make the call, and the people who guide it
Dr. Farghal wrote the book for two readers.
If you own the decision
Executives and CEOs
Capital planning and budget leaders
City, county, and state officials
Hospital, university, and utility leaders
Nonprofit and foundation boards
Private equity and M&A teams
If you guide the decision
Strategy and management consultants
Strategic planners and facilitators
Allovance Decision Coaches
Economic development advisors
Leadership and organizational coaches
Internal strategy and PMO teams
What’s Inside
Inside the Blueprint
The book is organized around the five steps of the Allovance method, which Dr. Farghal calls the S Sequence. Each step fixes a specific place where decisions break down.
01
Step 1: Strategize
Decide what matters before you debate what to do.
Name the goal, then narrow a wall of sticky notes to five or fewer strategic priorities, each with measurable objectives. The result is a Strategic Value Scorecard your team can use for every decision that follows.
02
Step 2: Compare / Sort
Weigh your priorities against each other.
Compare priorities two at a time and let the weights come out of the comparisons. You will see why giving one priority 20 points and another 10 rarely says what you meant, and why the book swaps “what is more important?” for “what deserves more attention right now?”
03
Step 3: Quantify / Scale
Make the subjective measurable.
Work with subject matter experts to define what low, medium, and high desirability look like for each objective. This step comes straight from Dr. Farghal’s doctoral research, and it is where soft goals get a number the whole team agrees on.
04
Step 4: Score
Hold every option to the same standard.
Score each project against every objective, along with urgency and complexity. Find out whether your top option is actually good, or only the best of a weak list.
05
Step 5: Select
Choose a portfolio you can defend.
See strategic value, complexity, urgency, and cost on a single chart, test scenarios against your budget, and understand the consequences of a decision before you commit to it.
“
I always get baffled that organizations equip managers with spreadsheets and presentation tools, yet they never give them a tool to make decisions well.
Dr. Sherif Farghal, The Decision-Making Blueprint
About the Author
Dr. Sherif Farghal
Founder & CEO, Allovance · President, Pyrovio Consulting
Sherif Farghal arrived at the University of Michigan from Egypt in January 1992 to earn a PhD, with no idea what to research. That October, an earthquake struck Cairo and damaged historic structures across the Nile Valley. Egypt’s antiquities officials had little money and no way to decide which priceless building to repair first. Their dilemma became his dissertation: a method for bringing subjective judgment into management decisions.
He spent the next thirty years refining that method with clients, first through Pyramid Consulting International and now through Pyrovio Consulting, working with utilities, universities, health systems, manufacturers, and governments. In 2016 he founded Allovance to turn the method into software. Today the City of Ann Arbor uses it to prioritize $1 billion in capital projects across 11 asset groups, and certified Decision Coaches bring it to organizations around the world.
PhD, Construction Engineering and Management, University of Michigan
M.S., Construction Engineering and Management, University of Michigan
M.S., Structural Engineering, Alexandria University
Former faculty, Alexandria University and the American University in Cairo
Creator of the Allovance method and software
30+ years of management consulting for companies and governments
Testimonials
What leaders are saying
“Sherif’s book provides a clear framework for capital planning. This book allows us to step back from reactive decision making and consistently prioritize the work that most improves system performance and resilience.”
Mark Mroczynski
President, FirstEnergy Transmission
“This book is foundational for states, cities, and municipalities to make data driven decisions around their budgets and selecting projects and initiatives that actually move the strategic needle forward.”
Jeff Bankowski
Partner, Guidehouse, and Former Chief Performance Officer of the State of Michigan
“The magic happens when a roomful of people with different perspectives agree on priorities among a complex set of decisions. This book provides the guidance and evidence to make better decisions in real time.”
Paula Sorrell
Associate Vice President, Innovation & Economic Development, George Mason University
“The Allovance method completely transformed the way I approached community development planning. It’s the most effective tool I’ve found for aligning resources with strategic values and staying focused on what truly matters.”
Chris Lussier
State Administrative Manager, Michigan State Housing Development Authority
From the Allovance community
“The big difference between the Allovance method and everything else I’ve encountered is the focus on quantifying the subjective.”
Kayo Ramirez
Technology Business Consultant, Michigan SBDC
“I wish I had this level of step by step decades ago when I was starting out as a consultant.”
Denise Dahl
President, Epiphany Planning & Development
Order Now
Get your copy of The Decision-Making Blueprint
Available in paperback, hardcover, and eBook.
Buying for a leadership team, a board, or a client engagement? Contact us about bulk orders
Put the Blueprint to Work
Ready to run the five steps with your team?
The book lays out the method. The Allovance platform is where teams carry it out together: building the scorecard, comparing priorities, and scoring projects in real time, with a certified Decision Coach guiding the conversation.
Consultants: the book is included in the Allovance Decision Coach Certification. Learn about certification
Sample Chapter
Read Chapter One: Strategize
Tell us a little about yourself and the first chapter is yours.
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