John Linton
...was a pretty good percentage of decisions to get correct in business life, though I kept being told that 95%+ was what was really required. Maybe I have always been wrong in my assumptions.
When I was much younger and was sent by IBM and other multi-national employers to various 'management schools' a lot of emphasis was always placed on how a manager's main responsibility was to get the decisions they were called on to make correct all of the time. This concept was given a lot of time in almost every course I attended with great emphasis on taking as much time as was needed to gather all the facts required to make any single decision and to allow for consultation with as many people as could be considered as able to add insight and valuable opinion to the process and final decision. It made a lot of sense and doubtless allowed 'correct' decisions to be made the overwhelming majority of the time.
However, I came from the sales part of these companies where decision making time frames seldom allowed much, if any, consultation to take place and mostly the decisions that needed to be made were during a conversation with a prospective client which limited the decision making consideration time to a few seconds with no ability to 'consult' with anyone. So, over many years, I have had to make most of the decisions I have been involved in without consultation and within a very short time frame - doubtless I could have gone down a different path and never made a commitment without a lot more consultation and consideration but it didn't work out that way. It is also undeniably true that I have made a lot of really bad decisions over my commercial life (and probably more than average in my personal life) but then I have taken the view that a quick bad decision can almost always be quickly reversed and is almost certainly better, on balance, than taking much longer to make a correct decision leaving many things 'on hold'.
It would be nice, and highly commercially advantageous, to be able to make the absolutely correct decision well within the time it is needed to be made and to have access to a diverse range of expert opinion against which you could test any assumptions you have decided to rely on - but I haven't run across that scenario over the past 40 or so years. I have seen appallingly bad decisions made, very often, by decision makers who have taken an inordinate time and endless advice before making them and I have seen so many instances of that happening it has, over the years, reinforced my belief that quick and logical with periodic review beats slow and consultative almost every time. My experience has been that any 'incorrect' decision quickly demonstrates that it is incorrect and can be changed, more than once if necessary, before the consultative decision makers have come to their first decision.
At Exetel we have a lot of analysis tools (as I'm sure a large number of companies do), which means that the 'consultative' process is unlikely to provide any more facts than can be obtained from our data bases and reports in a few seconds. Whether two heads are better than one (or three or four) is a moot point in terms of facts. In terms of 'problem resolution' multiple view points are always useful and, almost without exception, provide better answers to any problem than a single person - irrespective of how bright and experienced they are. If people are around to consult on any issue then it would be better to utilise such resources but in many fast moving businesses in changing circumstances that is a luxury that few companies can afford.....almost no companies of Exetel's size have such luxuries.
So, for many years now, I have adopted the attitude of accumulate facts (not opinions) as widely as possible and from as many reliable sources as possible and always have them at hand because you never know when you might need them. It has worked well enough for a very long time but, recently, I am having doubts about its efficacy. Perhaps the decisions have become too complex. Perhaps the razor sharp mind I used to think I had has dulled with age and too much alcohol. Perhaps the sources of 'facts' I have relied on in the past are no longer as reliable as they once were. I have no idea.
It seems to me that I am 'hovering' too close to the 51% level these days and need to change the ways that Exetel is managed.