The Hindu Business Line : Making right decisions versus making decisions right

The other day a long-lost friend dropped into my office. A senior IT professional in the US, he works across time-zones and coaxes venture capitalists to loosen their purse strings and spend millions on arcane areas in Information Technology. Over coffee, we got talking about various things. Somehow we landed on the subject of decision-making, and my friend narrated a small anecdote.

One day, after a marathon presentation to his company's board, he succeeded in getting an $8-million business plan approved. Exulting, he went back to his room and decided to spend a few minutes revelling in his success or, one may say, excess. "In walked," said my friend, "Mr Burgess, a director and a who's who of the US IT industry, with an ego ten times the size of this room." He continued: "Mr Burgess asked me, `how are your feeling Srini?,' and said, `Let me give you some advice Srini... It is not important to make the right decision but it is important to make the decision right'. He winked at me and walked out to catch his Concorde to London."

"Initially," said my friend, "the advice just sounded bombastic, something the motivation Gurus use, a seemingly clever but essentially jejune string of words. But it haunted me that whole night, which is when I decided to unravel the mystery of what he had told me... What do you make of the advice?"

It was my turn to lose sleep.Decisions. The raison d'etre of managers.

What did Mr Burgess really mean? Was he saying that once a decision was taken, it should be implemented wholeheartedly and not be subject to frequent second-guessing and faultfinding? Or was he saying that a decision was only as important as it helped achieve overall goals and should be `made right' during the course of its implementation if the need arose? This was what my friend made of it. But was he right?

Process of decision-making

How does one arrive at the right decision? What tools does one use? Is there a sure fire way to a smart decision?

The right or wrong of a decision is at best an educated guess. The breadth of information and the depth of analysis mitigate the percentage of error, but every decision remains framed in uncertainty.

Often managers of large businesses, utilities or services come across this cliché: "he/she is good at taking right decisions". Apart from being a cliché, it is also erroneous prima facie as no one can predict whether a decision is right or wrong at the time it is taken. The verdict is usually pronounced in hindsight. In some cases the time frame is short, say, in a one-day cricket match.

But in the case of business enterprises or in politics, the results could take longer. In business, the choice of a foray into a particular field or domain could prove successful or disastrous. A number of factors decide the outcome and how many were carefully considered at the time of decision-making would determine the extent of success or failure. In politics the choice of an ally or a course of policy may appear dead right but may turn out badly wrong.

Right or wrong

A crucial question that confronts a manager who is repeatedly called upon to make decisions is: "Am I doing the right thing? This question is not new and there are a number of books, theories, and so on that lead a manager on the logical, the intuitive, ratiocinate, the quantitative and the speculative routes to taking decisions. But whatever the method, its success depends on a number of imponderables.

Now any decision is taken to serve a particular objective or end or goal. So, that is a constant. A decision is primarily taken to achieve that goal. So, the decision should at all times sub-serve the goal. It stands to reason that one should not assign too much importance to the decision itself but to the goal, which means that the contours of the decision may need to be changed. One has to be flexible to adapt the decision to the goal.

Is this process of flexibility or course correction that Mr Burgess insinuated when he told my friend that it is important to make the decision right? Look at it like this. In an organisation, the management as an entity is a continuum. The issues and stakes are also continuums whereas decisions are multiple and varied, often dictated by contingencies and emergencies. While the latter perennially undergo change, the responsibility of the management towards stakeholders remains a constant. It becomes incumbent on the management to make all their decisions right irrespective of how they seemed at the time of taking.

Let me illustrate this with an example from the Second World War. The retreat at Dunkirk in May 1940. This is an excellent case in point for "not making the right decisions but making the decisions right." Thoug the British government had initially taken the strategic decision to use the British Expeditionary Forces (BEF) to arrest the German push into Belgium and France, it corrected course and allowed the Dunkirk retreat, saving over 3,00,000 British and French soldiers from certain death by evacuating them over nine days in makeshift flotillas across the English Channel.

In this case, though the goal of the first decision was to arrest the German push into France, the decision-makers saw the error in the decision when they found the German divisions pushing the BEF into a corner. Had the British still stuck to their original decision, it would have resulted in a massacre badly affecting the morale of soldiers and the people in a war that was to last five more years.

In the House of Commons, Winston Churchill hailed this as a miracle and thus was born the "Dunkirk spirit," which means the ability to cope with an adverse situation in a positive way. At the end of the day, it seems Churchill was not worried about making the right decision but in making the decision right. On the contrary, was Mr Burgess alluding to the excessive debates over decisions, which impede the progress of implementation and achievement? A good example is the Indica car of Tata Motors. Had the company given up after initial setbacks and to the fierce competition, the Indica would have failed to become the dominant player in its segment.

I once heard from a seasoned bureaucrat the advice he had received from his mentor known for his success and sagacity. "Advice would be tendered but orders will be obeyed."

Remember the lines of Lord Tennyson in Charge of the Light Brigade on what a bad decision blindly followed can do:

"Someone had blundered;

Theirs was not to make reply,

Theirs was not to reason why

Theirs was to do and die

And into the valley of death rode the six hundred."

I am still wrestling with the ambiguity.

(The author is Chief Commercial Manager, Passenger Marketing, Southern Railway.)