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decentralization which balances local autonomy in operations with central control of direction and policy.
that's wht we need to do at TEMA
Indeed, all five decisions went directly counter to what “everybody knew” at the time.
THE ELEMENTS OF THE DECISION PROCESS The truly important features of the decisions Vail and Sloan made are neither their novelty nor their controversial nature. They are: 1. The clear realization that the problem was generic and could only be solved through a decision which established a rule, a principle; 2. The definition of the specifications which the answer to the problem had to satisfy, that is, of the “boundary conditions”; 3. The thinking through what is “right,” that is, the solution which will fully satisfy the specifications before attention is given to the compromises, adaptations,
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The first question the effective decision-maker asks is: “Is this a generic situation or an exception?” “Is this something that underlies a great many occurrences? Or is the occurrence a unique event that needs to be dealt with as such?”
And this, the early manifestation of a new generic problem, is the fourth and last category of events with which the decision process deals.
We know now, for instance, that both the northeastern power failure and the thalidomide tragedy were only the first occurrences of what, under conditions of modern power technology or of modern pharmacology, are likely to become fairly frequent malfunctions unless generic solutions are found.
This was the error that snowballed a local power failure on the New York-Ontario border into the great northeastern blackout.
that to accept a probability of accidents was to condone, if not to encourage, dangerous driving—just as my grandmother’s generation believed that the doctor who treated venereal diseases abetted immorality. It is this common human tendency to confuse plausibility with morality which makes the incomplete hypothesis
He looks for the true problem.
And if the event is truly unique, the experienced decision-maker suspects that this heralds a new underlying problem and that what appears as unique will turn out to have been simply the first manifestation of a new generic situation.
One of the most obvious facts of social and political life is the longevity of the temporary. British licensing hours for taverns, for instance, French rent controls, or Washington “temporary” government buildings, all three hastily developed in World War I to last “a few months of temporary emergency” are still with us fifty years later. The effective decision-maker knows this. He too improvises, of course. But he asks himself every time, “If I had to live with this for a long time, would I be willing to?” And if the answer is “No,” he keeps on working to find a more general, a more
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“Does the explanation explain the observed events and does it explain all of them?;
he always writes out what the solution is expected to make happen—make automobile accidents disappear, for instance—and then tests regularly to see if this really happens;
The second major element in the decision process is clear specifications as to what the decision has to accomplish.
assumptions and objectives of the executive editor, it was the right decision. His boundary conditions quite clearly were not the number of copies sold at any one morning, but the infallibility of the Times as a grammarian and as Magister Americae.
The trouble with miracles is not, after all, that they happen rarely; it is that one cannot rely on them.
One has to start out with what is right rather than what is acceptable (let alone who is right) precisely because one always has to compromise in the end.
Converting the decision into action is the fourth major element in the decision process.
5. Finally, a feedback has to be built into the decision to provide a continuous testing, against actual events, of the expectations that underlie the decision.
As to Sloan’s decentralization of General Motors, it still stands—but it is becoming clear that it will have to be thought through again soon. Not only have basic principles of his design been changed and revised so often that they have become fuzzy beyond recognition—the autonomous automotive divisions, for instance, increasingly are not in full control of their manufacturing and assembly operations and therefore not fully responsible for the results. The individual makes of car, from Chevrolet to Cadillac, have also long ceased to represent major price classes the way Sloan originally
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All military services have long ago learned that the officer who has given an order goes out and sees for himself whether it has been carried out. At the least he sends one of his own aides—he never relies on what he is told by the subordinate to whom the order was given. Not that he distrusts the subordinate; he has learned from experience to distrust communications.
This is the reason why a battalion commander is expected to go out and taste the food served his men. He could, of course, read the menus and order this or that item to be brought in to him. But no; he is expected to go into the mess hall and take his sample of the food from the same kettle that serves the enlisted men.
abstractions can be relied on only if they are constantly checked against the concrete.
Reality never stands still very long.
But the effective executive also knows that people do not start out with the search for facts. They start out with an opinion. There is nothing wrong with this. People experienced in an area should be expected to have an opinion. Not to have an opinion after having been exposed to an area for a good long time would argue an unobservant eye and a sluggish mind.
glad to know I'm on a Drucker path in our reorg 20160905
The effective decision-maker assumes that the traditional measurement is not the right measurement. Otherwise, there would generally be no need for a decision; a simple adjustment would do. The traditional measurement reflects yesterday’s decision. That there is need for a new one normally indicates that the measurement is no longer relevant.
Finding the appropriate measurement is thus not a mathematical exercise. It is a risk-taking judgment.
look for the facts that would support it. But he knew that the right decision demands adequate disagreement.
He could be certain that he would not become the prisoner of somebody’s preconceived conclusions.
Roosevelt knew that the main task of an American President is not administration. It is the making of policy, the making of the right decisions. And these are made best on the basis of “adversary proceedings” to use the term of the lawyers for their method of getting at the true facts in a dispute, and of making sure that all relevant aspects of a case are presented to the court.
The only way to break out of the prison of special pleading and preconceived notions is to make sure of argued, documented, thought-through disagreements.
disagreement is needed to stimulate the imagination.
Imagination of the first order is, I admit, not in abundant supply. But neither is it as scarce as is commonly believed. Imagination needs to be challenged and stimulated, however, or else it remains latent and unused. Disagreement, especially if forced to be reasoned, thought through, documented, is the most effective stimulus we know.
He starts out with the commitment to find out why people disagree.
Effective executives know, of course, that there are fools around and that there are mischief-makers. But they do not assume that the man who disagrees with what they themselves see as clear and obvious is, therefore, either a fool or a knave.
good to know this isn't a new problem
The effective executive is concerned first with understanding. Only then does he even think about who is right and who is wrong.
Most people start out with the certainty that what they see is the only way to see at all.
No matter how high his emotions run, no matter how certain he is that the other side is completely wrong and has no case at all, the executive who wants to make the right decision forces himself to see opposition
Every decision is like surgery. It is an intervention into a system and therefore carries with it the risk of shock.
create a new situation.
“De minimis non curat praetor” [The magistrate does not consider trifles] said the Roman law almost two thousand years ago—but many decision-makers still need to learn it.
In this situation the effective decision-maker compares effort and risk of action to risk of inaction. There is no formula for the right decision here. But the guidelines are so clear that decision in the concrete case is rarely difficult. They are: Act if on balance the benefits greatly outweigh cost and risk; and Act or do not act; but do not “hedge” or compromise. The surgeon who only takes out half the tonsils or half the appendix risks as much infection or shock as if he did the whole job. And he has not cured the condition, has indeed made it worse. He either operates or he doesn’t.
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“Is there any reason to believe that additional study will produce anything new? And is there reason to believe that the new is likely to be relevant?”
But the effective decision-maker does not wait long—a few days, at the most a few weeks. If the “daemon” has not spoken by then, he acts with speed and energy whether he likes to or not.
Executives are not paid for doing things they like to do. They are paid for getting the right things done—most of all in their specific task, the making of effective decisions.
good example of the shift to decision which the new techniques impose on us is the much discussed PERT (Program Evaluation and Review Technique)
The first step toward effectiveness is a procedure: recording where the time goes.
Yet this can perhaps still be done by going down a checklist every few months, that is, by following a form. It still concerns itself only with efficiency in the utilization of a scarce resource—namely, time.
What is being recorded and analyzed is no longer what happens to us but what we should try to make happen in the environment around us. And what is being developed here is not information, but character: foresight, self-reliance, courage. What is being developed here, in other words, is leadership—not the leadership of brilliance and genius, to be sure, but the much more modest yet more enduring leadership of dedication, determination, and serious purpose.
There is little danger that anyone will compare this essay on training oneself to be an effective executive with, say, Kierkegaard’s great self-development tract, Training in Christianity. There
