Prof Paul Goodwin to conduct CIMA Mastercourses

Professor Paul Goodwin, BA (Hons) Economics, MSc, PhD, Professor of Management Science at the Management School, University of Bath, U.K. will lead two CIMA Mastercourses in February on ‘Judging the Future: Effective Planning for a Dynamic Business World’ and ‘Management Decision Making: a Blueprint for Best Practice’. The courses will take place at the Trans Asia hotel on February 13 and 14, respectively.

Professor Goodwin has advised organisations including South Western Electricity (UK), DSTL and the UK’s Departments of Health and Work and Pensions on forecasting and decision making. He is a Director of the International Institute of Forecasting and a member of the editorial boards of several international journals including the International Journal of Forecasting, the Journal of Behavioral Decision Making and Foresight.

The first course, ‘Judging the Future: Effective Planning for a Dynamic Business World’ will look at how judgemental biases and group dynamics can distort the way in which we look at the future. It will then consider how to make the best use of expert management judgement when making forecasts for the short, medium and long term.

The second Mastercourse on ‘Management Decision Making: a Blueprint for Best Practice’ will examine the reasons why decisions can go badly wrong. It will demonstrate a number of techniques that allow crucial and difficult decisions to be handled in a structured way so that new insights emerge and a documented and defensible rationale for the decision is established.

From this Mastercourse participants will gain an awareness of the dangers of frame blindness in decision making and the ability to handle complex decisions with insight and confidence. They will also be able to make better judgements about risks, recognise common biases in the way people handle uncertainty and gain familiarity with methods designed to avoid the pitfalls of group decision making.