The Effective Executive: The Definitive Guide to Getting the Right Things Done (Harperbusiness Essentials)

by Peter F. Drucker

A perfect example was President Kennedy’s Bay of Pigs decision in 1961. One specification was clearly Castro’s overthrow. But at the same time, there was another specification: not to make it appear that U.S. forces were intervening in one of the American republics. That the second specification was rather absurd, and that no one in the whole world would have believed for one moment that the invasion was a spontaneous uprising of the Cubans, is beside the point. To the American policy-makers at the time, the appearance of nonintervention seemed a legitimate and indeed a necessary condition. But these two specifications would have been compatible with each other only if an immediate islandwide uprising against Castro would have completely paralyzed the Cuban army. And this, while not impossible, was clearly not highly probable in a police state. Either the whole idea should have been dropped or American full-scale support should have been provided to ensure success of the invasion. It is not disrespect for President Kennedy to say that his mistake was not, as he explained, that he had “listened to the experts.” The mistake was failure to think through clearly the boundary conditions that the decision had to satisfy, and refusal to face up to the unpleasant reality that a decision that has to satisfy two different and at bottom incompatible specifications is not a decision but a prayer for a miracle.