Organization

What You

Don't Know

About

Making

Decisions

ii

Decision making is arguably the most important Job ofthe senior executive

and one ofthe easiest to get wrong. It doesn't have to be that wayif you look at the process in a whole new light.

by David A.Garvin and Michael A. Roberto

L

EADERS SHOW THEIR METTLE IN MANY WAYS-

setting strategy and motivating people, just to

• mention two-but above all else leaders are made

or broken by the quality of their decisions. That's a given,

right? If you answered yes, then you would probably be

surprised by how many executives approach decision

making in a way that neither puts enough options on the

table nor permits sufficient evaluation to ensure that they

can make the best choice. Indeed, our research over the

past several years strongly suggests that, simply put, most

leaders get decision making all wrong.

The reason: Most businesspeople treat decision making

as an event-a discrete choice that takes place at a single

point in time, whether they're sitting at a desk, moderating a meeting, or staring at a spreadsheet. This classic view

of decision making has a pronouncement popping out of

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What You Don't Know About Making Decisions

a leader's head, based on experience, gut, research, or all

three. Say the matter at hand is whether to pull a product with weak sales off the market. An "event" leader

would mull in solitude, ask for advice, read reports, mull

some more, then say yea or nay and send the organization off to make it happen. But to look at decision making that way is to overlook larger social and organizational contexts, which ultimately determine the success

of any decision.

The fact is, decision making is not an event. It's a process, one that unfolds over weeks, months, or even years;

one that's fraught with power plays and politics and is replete with personal nuances and institutional history; one

Decisions as...