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Perspectives on Personal Finance

Making Successful Decisions through the Strategy, Law & Ethics Model

George Siedel

University of Michigan

Successful decision making is based on three key pillars: strategy, law and ethics. After taking this course you will be able to use a practical framework based on these three elements to make successful business, personal and leadership decisions.

This course opens with an example of a leadership decision: President Barack Obama’s strategic decision to capture or kill Osama bin Laden. The course then shows how the three elements can be used to prevent a tragedy when making a personal decision.

The rest of the course focuses on making successful business decisions.  In essence, to achieve business and career success, you must create value (strategy) and manage risk (law) in a responsible manner (ethics).

Because the Law Pillar plays a central role in the three pillar model, the course includes practical legal briefings (with many examples) on the key elements of business success. Specifically, the course shows you how to:

•\tattract the best employees,
•\tdevelop successful products,
•\tcreate new business models,
•\tprotect intellectual property,
•\tcreate contracts that achieve business goals, and
•\tuse dispute resolution processes that improve business relationships.

Using a global perspective, the course also provides an introduction to international business culture for learners from the United States, and an introduction to the U.S. business culture for learners from outside the U.S.

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