When I was little, my older brother used to take me to horror movies on Friday night. At some point in the film, the good guys (and good girls) would approach a door. We all knew that evil lurked on the other side of that door. All of the kids watching the movie either thought or yelled, "No, no, don’t go in there! They’ll get you!" But nobody listened, and they always went in. Needless to say, something horrible happened to them.
I have run into the same problem in my work with organizations. Smart leaders and managers with good instincts make decisions that are clearly going to produce bad outcomes. These are not "bad people" but bad decisions, ones driven by greed, narcissism, indifference, hubris or hunger for power. Nor are these decisions made in an information vacuum. If you step back and look at all of the information and knowledge available, it is clear that this decision is not going to produce the results being sought. The resources aren’t adequate to achieve the goal; we haven’t defined the problem correctly; the process isn’t clear; the right people aren’t in place; key people aren’t aligned or even viewing core issues in the same way. And yet. And yet.
So why does this happen? Why do smart, talented managers with good instincts go through that door even though it’s clear that evil is on the other side? For the outside consultant, this is a tricky problem. Typically, it is the role of the outsider to bring a different perspective to a situation, to help define an issue or problem with a fresh set of eyes. But this new perspective is often unwelcome, and that lack of receptivity gives us some clues as to why good people make bad decisions.
I was recently talking with the CEO of a large non-profit organization. The organization is completing a strategic plan in which they have invested a lot of time and money. At the same time, they have a deficit in the current fiscal year and are projecting a (smaller) one for next year. The three plans — immediate, next year and strategic — are not in sync. When I described the experiences I have seen when these problems resolved and suggested an approach to the important task of aligning these plans, a look of extreme fatigue came over the CEO's face and we changed the subject.
This experience and others illustrate a list of sources of wrong decision making by otherwise solid managers. Here are what seem to be some of the major ones:
Losing sight of the goal: New York Yankee great Yogi Berra was driving the team bus once during spring training when one of the coaches asked Yogi if he was sure he knew where he was going. Yogi responded, "Nope, we’re totally lost, but we’re making great time." It’s easy to lose sight of the goal under the pressures of day-to-day operations, especially when there are a lot of disruptions and distractions. For example, if there is opposition or resistance to something we are trying to do, it’s easy to drift from a focus on achieving the goal to one of defeating those who are opposing us. A lot of bad decisions flow from focusing on people or peripheral concerns, rather than on the goal we are trying to achieve or the problem we are trying to solve.
Solving the wrong problem: Descartes once said, "The most corrupting lies are problems misstated." Lots of times in organizations, it is difficult to tell — especially at the outset — if something is a people problem, a system problem, a work-process problem or an organizational-culture problem. But these distinctions make a big difference in deciding what to do.
Years ago, a hospital executive called and asked me if I knew of any candidates for a large physician-management group. When I asked what had happened to the previous person, I was informed that she had been fired. When I asked why, the response was, "She was no good." I thought this information was a little skimpy and asked to do some analysis before I recommended someone. It turned out that the fired person was not an all star, but neither was she a bad performer. Basic systems and processes — over which she had little control — made it virtually impossible for her to succeed. The next person would have run into the same barriers to success. The systems and processes were either implemented or fixed, and the person that was hired has just received an award for a decade of outstanding service. In the end, we had defined the problems correctly and produced solid solutions.
Two key questions to ask at the outset of decision processes: What is the problem (as opposed to "who is to blame")? And, what happens because of this problem? The answers to these questions are the pathway to solid decisions.
Delay and fatigue: Some ancient history. It now seems clear that the world came far closer to nuclear war during the 1962 Cuban missile crisis than people had previously thought. In retrospect, we were very lucky and barely avoided a cataclysm that would have dwarfed the terror attacks of 2001. And luck is the right word. The factors that were in play — a mix of seemingly all bad choices, broken communications, insufficient information and extremely high levels of mistrust — all helped produce a combination that resulted in a strong desire for delay. Over time, delay and endless meetings produced fatigue, and fatigue, by most accounts, served to cloud judgment and decision making.
In difficult situations, we all have a tendency to want to put off decisions. Maybe the problem will go away by itself. Maybe we’ll get more information. Over time, delay and drift produce a kind of fatigue that results in actions and decisions that are not well-thought out. A kind of, let’s get rid of this, it’s been hanging around for a long-time mentality sets in. Let’s do "something."
This malaise is different from finding the "least-worst" alternative when all of the choices are bad. That is a difficult — but honorable — activity. Fatigue-driven decisions tend to be the outcomes of muddled information, a lack of clear delineation of what our choices are, a reluctance to accept new information and a failure to think through the consequences of different choices. "We were just tired" is often an accurate, but lame, explanation, for things that have gone wrong, or — at a minimum — have gone worse than they should have.
Avoidance and denial: At an early point in their tenures, leaders and managers send a clear signal to everyone in the organization about their willingness to hear bad or difficult news. As in many areas related to leadership and management, it appears that the Bush administration, especially the President himself, gives us the poster children for this negative trait. There is a straight line from sending the message that you don’t want to hear. Bad news leads to not hearing bad news, which leads to being isolated from essential information, knowledge and reality, which leads to making really bad decisions.
Lots of decisions are made under conditions of uncertainty. We have to make them despite the fact that we lack important information or knowledge. This is unavoidable ignorance. When, however, we deny ourselves available information or knowledge because we don’t want to hear it or consider the consequences, it becomes almost willful. And even otherwise good leaders and managers can fall into this trap.
What are some tools for avoiding the bad-decision trap? Several of these fall into the broad category of self-awareness — of understanding our own weaknesses and finding ways to compensate for or avoid their consequences. For example, if I am a decision procrastinator, it’s useful to find ways to set clear time lines for decision making. In addition, the following are useful "checklist" items for avoiding bad decisions:
— Let’s make sure we understand the problem. What kind of problem is this? What happens because of this problem? How much time do we have
to do something? What will happen if we don’t do anything?
— What are our choices? What are we trying to accomplish through these choices? If this is a choice among bad and worse, what is the least-worst choice?
— What is our level of understanding and our information? Can we get more usable information in the time available and at a cost we can afford?
— Think in binary terms: "yes" and "no." Make sure that everyone with a role to play understands that a decision has been made, what that decision is, what they will do, and what all of the communications are.
All simple steps, but never easy.
Editor's note: Dr. Frank Schneiger is the president of Human Services Management Institute Inc., a 25-year-old management-consulting firm that focuses on organizational change. Much of his current work is in the area of problems of execution and implementing rapid changes as responses to operational problems.
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