New strategy book targets gut-driven corporate decisions

Sherif Farghal’s new book argues that businesses are leaving money and strategy on the table by relying on instinct instead of a repeatable decision process. The book lays out a five-step framework meant to help organizations make higher-stakes choices with more discipline and less regret.

Why it matters: - Nearly half of employees say they trust their gut over the data in front of them when making decisions, a habit that grows more common higher up the org chart. - Farghal argues that instinct-first choices can carry a steep price for budgets, strategy and capital spending. - U.S. businesses spend nearly $3 trillion a year on capital expenditures alone, raising the stakes for better decision-making.

What happened: - Sherif Farghal released The Decision-Making Blueprint: How To Build A Process For Business Decisions That Works Every Time in 2026 through Indie Books International. - Farghal is the founder and CEO of Allovance and a management consultant with more than 30 years of experience. - Farghal says he has used his decision-making framework with Fortune 250 companies, universities and public sector organizations. - The book presents the Allovance method, a five-step framework developed over three decades of consulting work.

The details: - The framework starts with Strategize, which defines organizational priorities and turns them into a strategic value scorecard. - Sort/Compare weighs priorities against each other to show what matters most. - Scale/Quantify turns subjective priorities such as culture or reputation into measurable numbers. - Score evaluates each project or option against the scorecard. - Select uses the scores to build consensus and choose with confidence. - Farghal writes that organizations often make decisions based on impulse and then regret them. - Farghal writes that “well-meaning committees can easily become a multi-headed monster.” - Farghal also writes that “no decision is death.” - Case studies in the book show the process can reduce hurt feelings by giving ideas the space and time to be weighed properly. - One outcome described in the book was a decision that “wasn’t an opinion; it was arithmetic,” Farghal writes.

Between the lines: - The book frames decision-making as an organizational culture problem, not just a process problem. - Farghal is pushing back on committee-driven consensus that can slow action without improving judgment. - The approach aims to make tradeoffs explicit, which can help teams defend hard choices and move on faster. - Farghal says the pain of regret outweighs the satisfaction of a good decision.

What’s next: - Farghal says he wants the book to help readers make decisions they can live with and move on from the first time. - He says his broader goal is to transform organizational decision-making culture. - The foundation for Allovance Software comes from his dissertation research and more than 20 years of work through Pyramid Consulting International. - Allovance is positioned as a cloud-based strategic and capital planning platform for businesses, non-profits and governments that need to prioritize projects and allocate scarce resources. - Indie Books International, founded in 2014 in Oceanside, California, has published more than 200 titles and positions itself as an independent alternative for business authors.