How decision making can be led

We all make them, but some matter more

Good knowledge base or just lucky?

We all make decisions and we all makes mistakes. Some people make better decisions than
others, some end up making inspired decisions based on the right kind of knowledge, and
some make great decisions because they just got lucky.
As for mistakes, choosing the wrong color of drapes or carpets is probably something you
can live with, being a CFO and failing in all your financial predictions might get you fired, but
thats better than being a doctor and killing someone with the wrong diagnosis, or deciding
nobody will be crossing the road when you decide to drive like a maniac.
You dont need to be what we might call a decisive person to make decisions. We all do it.
Red or blue? Ice cream or pudding? Republican or Democrat? Raise product prices or
undercut the competition? Armed invasion or diplomacy? Train your own staff for a project or
bring in experts? Get married or stay single? One lump of sugar in your coffee or two?
Given that some decisions are more important to get right than others, its essential for
effective decision-makers to know on what they are basing their choices and why.
If you pick a red T-shirt rather than a blue one, its acceptable to reason that you either just
like it better or it matches your shoes. Its unacceptable to go with hunches or whims when it
comes to decisions which can have the effect of either enhancing or fulfilling peoples
expectations of an ordered and happy existence, or devastating and dashing their hopes
and aspirations and wrecking lives.

Good judgment is a talent

Good judgment based on knowledge decision-making based on what is known is a
talent which people charged with running organizations (whether it is governments,
companies or any other organizations which depends on leadership and decision making)
have in common and in which they all participate with widely varying levels of success.
But they all need to know what the foundations are for their decisions, what sort of knowledge
is the framework on which they are basing a choice. What also needs to be known is who is to
make the decisions on which so much may depend. Is one person, one leader, the one
decision maker? Or is there an acceptance that different people may have different opinions
and expertise that could and should be brought to bear on a particular decision?
Should the decision be a team effort, a consensus? And should the leader, the final arbiter of
what is or is not going to happen, lead by example by making decisions? Or should that
leader explore the combined knowledge of the people he or she can call on by, not making
assertions, but asking questions? By teasing out, bit by bit, the whys, and wherefores, the
possible repercussions of this or that action, the pluses and minuses, the extrapolations into
the unknown?
Oh, so many preliminary decisions about decision making those leaders have to make
before they get down to those no turning back decisions which could have jubilant or
catastrophic consequences. Having good decision makers within the organization may
seem a panacea, but even the most talented and inspired of them are only as good as the

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DOI 10.1108/14777280510572185

Is one person, one leader, the one decision maker? Or is there

an acceptance that different people may have different opinions
and expertise that could and should be brought to bear on a
particular decision?

information they have available on which to base their decision. And no one person will be
the right arbiter of choices to be made in different sets of circumstances.

Complexity of tragedies and threat

The art of decision making is well documented, yet its intricacies (and pitfalls) remain
complex. Examples of just how complex, and potentially disastrous, it can get are explored
in Steven P. Feldmans study of decisions which resulted in the Challenger space shuttle
destruction, with the loss of seven crew members, in 1986, and the more recent loss of the
Columbia, and in Robert F. Grattons case study of the decision-making process involving
President John F. Kennedy and his advisors during the Cuban missile crisis of 1962.
Feldman concludes that in the process of decision making preceding both the Challenger
and Columbia tragedies, there was a remarkable lack of individual and organizational
memory. He says:
At NASA, memory was reduced to the quantitative measure experience base. This measure
abbreviates memory to a dangerously low level because it not only excludes qualitative data, but
also arrests and reifies memory by excluding historical analysis of quantitative data relevant to
safety and other organizational goals. In other words, a lack of memory was not only responsible
for misunderstanding the level of risk on Columbias last flight, but engineers also did not notice
the accumulation of risk in the fight history preceding Challenger.

Time pressure and misunderstanding

Ensuring adequate (i.e. no matter how long it takes) time and knowledge was available
before a safe or not decision to fly was made, was in conflict with pressure to increase and
maintain the number of flights. Time pressure interacted with the culture of objectivity at
NASA in ways that made it difficult to slow down the fight schedule, resulting in the wrong
decision being made about whether it was safe to fly. Misunderstandings of flight risk
resulted from two general aspects of NASAs culture:
1. an over-confidence in quantitative data went hand-in-hand with a marginalization of
nonquantifiable data, leading to an insensitivity to uncertainty and a loss of organizational
memory; and
2. problem definition and solution creation were constructed as if they were independent of
organizational goals, resulting in an inaccurate estimation of risk.

Presidents risk assessment

The risk President Kennedy and his advisors faced in 1962 was that of getting his decisions
wrong and plunging the world into a catastrophic, possibly nuclear, conflict. Tapes of the
day-by-day discussions at that critical time may be more than 40 years old but an analysis of
the decision-making process and strategy formulation that emerged is still relevant today.
Kennedys approach was generally non-assertive and he often appeared to be the only one
to take an overall view of the total picture of the crisis concentrating on the removal of
missiles from Cuba and ignoring different agendas, such as the removal from office of
Cubas president, Fidel Castro. At the start of the crisis, more than 62 percent of his
interventions were questions, which shaped the search for understanding by eliciting

VOL. 19 NO. 1 2005 DEVELOPMENT AND LEARNING IN ORGANIZATIONS PAGE 23

everyones views. Different arms of government had different approaches, with the Defense
Department continually pressing for air strikes and invasion. However, Kennedys style of
leadership gained agreement to his diplomatic, restrained approach. Robert F. Grattan says:
Here was no dominating, macho leader, but a subtle facilitator extracting, forming and
sharing ideas.

Everyone has to be involved

The leaders role in making a success of collaborative decision making is also highlighted in
Howard Hills assertion that they neither command, nor manage but set goals, motivate and
support. He says:
If decisions are to be truly collaborative, then everyone involved must feel they are respected by
others for the contribution they bring . . . The essence of collaborative decision making is that the
leadership moves round the group. The team leader does not control or dictate. She or he may set
the agenda, but only leads when his or her own expertise or preferences come to the fore.

Leadership, of course, also involves a recognition of the relative strengths and weaknesses
of individual team members, and also a recognition that people do moan and groan about
things, and also make mistakes. Grumbling can result in someone feeling that, even if their
leader doesnt accept what they say, at least theyve been listened to.
Mistakes can be analyzed, learned from and the whole experience shared. As Hills says:
People are not automatons who respond to commands. They are individuals preferring different
activities and approaches. Making use and extracting benefits from these differences is a key
benefit of collaborative decision making.

Comment
This review is based on The culture of objectivity: quantification, uncertainty, and the
evaluation of risk at NASA by Steven P. Feldman, The Cuban missile crisis: strategy
formulation in action by Robert F. Gratton and Collaborative decision making: how to make
it work by Howard Hills.
Feldmans detailed study reviews the decision-making processes and the influences
which were brought to bear on those processes in the years before the space shuttle
Challenger exploded in 1986, with analyses of NASAs decision-making data during the
years preceding the disaster that befell the Columbia space shuttle, lost during its return to
earth in 2003. He demonstrates with a carefully-constructed view of the culture of
objectivity, of how decisions are made and what knowledge is brought to bear on those
decisions how misunderstandings of flight risk resulted.

Keywords:
Decision making,
Information management,
Risk management,
Leadership,
Quality control

Robert F. Gratton analyses President Kennedys style of leadership and decision making
during the crucial days of the Cuban missile crisis in 1962. He reveals that Kennedy adopted
a questioning, Socratic approach and concludes that the collective strategy process cannot
truly begin until a collective aim has been decided. In addition, the strategy process is better
led by a facilitator than an authoritarian, and strategy formulation is an art, guided by
whatever science can be brought to bear.
Howard Hills demonstrates the benefits of collaborative decision making. He identifies
symptoms of teams that fail to make collaborative decisions, and offers actions a team
leader may take to enable effective collaborative decisions to be made. He asserts the value
of mutual respect, learning from mistakes and welcoming feedback.

References
Feldman, S.P. (2004), The culture of objectivity: quantification, uncertainty, and the evaluation of risk at
NASA, Human Relations (USA), Vol. 57 No. 6, pp. 691-719, ISSN: 0018-7267.
Gratton, R.F. (2004), The Cuban missile crisis: strategy formulation in action, Management Decision,
Vol. 42 No. 1, pp. 55-68, ISSN: 0025-1747.
Hills, H. (2004), Collaborative decision making: how to make it work, Training Journal (UK), July,
pp. 18-22, ISSN: 1465-6523.

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