The first element of decision_x000D_

Editor's Note: Decision-making is only one of many tasks for managers, but it is a unique task for managers. Management guru Peter Dulac said: "A manager is a manager precisely because he has special status and knowledge, so he is expected to make decisions that have a special impact on the entire organization, performance and results." Then , How should managers make decisions?

This article is selected from Chapter 6, "The Elements of Decision Making," in Dulac's classic book, Effective Managers. The title and subheadings are added by the editor of this journal.

Effective decision makers first need to identify the nature of the problem: is it a recurring problem, or is it an occasional exception? In other words, is one problem the cause of another recurring problem? Or is it really a special event that needs to be resolved in a special way? If it is a recurring old problem, it should establish principles and principles to cure it; and if it is an occasional exception, it should be dealt with individually according to the situation.

Four Types of Problems

According to the occurrence of the problem, there are not only two types of "regular" and "exceptional", but generally can be divided into four types.

The first category is the really recurring problem. The individual problems that have occurred are only a superficial phenomenon.

Most of the problems managers encounter on a daily basis fall into this category. For example, the inventory decision in production, strictly speaking, cannot be called a decision, but only a measure. Problems of this kind are recurring, and many problems in production are of this nature.

The production control and engineering units in the factory deal with many of these problems, hundreds of cases per month. However, in analysis, most of these problems are only superficial phenomena, which are some superficial phenomena that reflect the basic situation. However, it is often difficult for the program engineers and production engineers of the production department to see through this layer. They are "in this mountain", so they "don't know the true face of Mount Lu." Sometimes, maybe every month, they have a similar problem, like a broken fitting on a pipe carrying steam or fluid. Such problems can only be revealed to be "often" in nature after a longer period of analysis. Only then can they find out if the load on the equipment is exceeded due to excessive temperature or pressure, and the joint needs to be redesigned. But before reaching this conclusion, the production department often spent a lot of time repairing the pipe joints.

The second category of problems, although occasional in a particular situation, is still a recurring problem in nature.

For example, a company accepts a proposal from another company and the two merge into one. If the company accepts this advice, it will never receive the same advice a second time. For this company, for its board and its governing body, accepting this advice can only be a one-off, a special kind of problem. However, looking into the nature of this problem, it does have a "regular" nature, and this kind of problem may arise in the business world at any time. Therefore, when considering acceptance, it should be based on certain principles and must refer to the experience of others.

The third type of problem is the accidental special event in the true sense.

During November 1965, a total power outage occurred throughout the Northeast of the United States, from St. Lawrence to Washington. According to preliminary investigations, this is indeed a truly special incident. Another example is the tragedy caused by the birth of deformed babies caused by pregnant women taking "thalidomide" in the early 1960s. However, the probability of this type of accidental occurrence is only one in ten million or one in a billion. After it has happened once, it is unlikely to happen again. Just like the chair we sit on suddenly automatically decomposes into elements such as carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, etc., it is impossible to happen. Truly accidental exceptions are rare. But when it happens, we have to ask ourselves: is this a "true accident", or is it the first occurrence of another "regular event"?

This is the fourth type of problem we're going to cover: "recurring events" that appear for the first time.

Take the two examples above: power outages in the northeastern United States, and thalidomide-induced deformities in babies, which we don't consider until today are the first occurrences of "regular events." We already have modern power technology and medical knowledge. If we can find "recurring solutions", such blackouts and tragedies of deformed babies should not happen again and again.

All three categories require a "regular solution" with the exception of the third category of "really occasional special events" above. In other words, a rule, a policy or a principle needs to be developed. Once the correct principles are in place, all such problems will be solved easily. In other words, when the problem recurs, it can be dealt with in principle. Only the third category of "really occasional special events" must be dealt with individually, and there is no principle to follow.

Common Mistakes

Effective decision makers often spend considerable time determining the nature of a problem. If the category is wrong, its decision must be the wrong one.

A common mistake we make is to mistake "regular problems" as a series of "incident problems". In other words, failure and inefficiency are the result without understanding the basis for the crux of the problem.

Many domestic policy failures during the Kennedy Administration era were the result of this mistake. President Kennedy naturally has many experts, but they have only done one successful job, that is, the handling of the Cuban missile incident. If they didn't do this, the Kennedy administration would have accomplished nothing. The main reason is what they themselves call "pragmatism". They did not establish a principle and insisted that "the soldiers will come to block, and the water will cover the soil". However, it was clear to everyone, even themselves, that the basic assumptions on which they made their policies, their basic estimates of the post-war situation, were increasingly divorced from the realities of foreign and domestic affairs at the time.

Another common mistake is to mistake a genuinely new problem as a relapse, and to apply the old principles.

The power outage in the northeastern United States is one example. The power outage was originally limited to New York and Ontario, Canada, but later became more and more widespread, snowballing into the entire Northeast. Power engineers in New York City initially dealt with "old principles" that only apply to normal load conditions. Later, after a detailed inspection, they discovered an extraordinary phenomenon, and only then did they realize that they could not use ordinary methods at this moment, but had to use extraordinary methods to solve them.

On the contrary, President Kennedy succeeded in handling the Cuban missile incident because he saw that it was an "extraordinary event" and should be handled with "extraordinary" means. After President Kennedy's decision, his wit and courage came into play.

A third common mistake is the specious definition of some fundamental problem. The following is a typical example.

Since the end of World War II, the U.S. military has often felt that it has been unable to retain high-quality medical personnel. The military has repeatedly studied this issue and made many suggestions. However, all research work is based on a plausible assumption - that the problem is insufficient pay, but the real cause is the traditional system of military doctors.

The military medical organization in the United States has always attached importance to general physicians, but today's trend is to focus on specialized physicians. According to the military's system, military doctors can only climb the administrative level on the ladder of personnel promotion, which eventually leads to a disconnection with their specialty - medical research. The younger generation of medical personnel feel that the result of their service in the military is either promotion or permanent general doctorship, which is a waste of what they have learned. What they really need is the opportunity to develop medical talents and eventually become a specialist physician.

Honestly, the U.S. military has yet to address this fundamental problem to this day. Could it be that they are willing to keep military doctors at the stage of second-class medical institutions, and only let those doctors who cannot become first-class talents stay in the hospital? Or, have they planned to overhaul the military's medical establishment? I think unless the military accepts this notion as an important decision, there will always be an exodus of young and promising doctors.

The last mistake is seeing only the part of the problem and not seeing the whole picture.

In 1966, the U.S. auto industry was suddenly under attack. All walks of life have accused American cars of being unsafe, and the industry itself has been panicked for a while.

But in fact, the American auto industry not only pays attention to the safety of the vehicle itself, but also pays attention to highway engineering and driver training. There are two main reasons for vehicle accidents in society, one is poor roads, and the other is careless driving. This kind of argument is very appealing. But in the United States, every agency involved with vehicle safety, from highway police to driving schools, has a common goal of being safety first. And the safety campaign has really paid off. On roads that attach importance to driving safety, the number of accidents is obviously less; drivers who have received safety training are also less involved in accidents. However, the factual evidence is that while the crash rate per 1,000 vehicles or per 1,000 kilometers traveled has been declining, the total number of crashes and the extent of damage from crashes have continued to rise.

We have known for a long time that among all accident incidents, the accident caused by drunk driving or a very small number of drivers with "traveling tendency" often accounts for about 3/4 of the accident; It's really not the driving school's responsibility, nor is it caused by bad roads.

We've also known for a long time that the focus of our efforts is on those crashes beyond the control of traffic safety laws and training. That is to say, in addition to road safety and driving training, it is also necessary to make technical efforts at the same time, so that in the event of a car accident, the casualties can be minimized. What the automobile manufacturing industry should do is to not only ensure the safety of vehicles in the case of "normal driving" in terms of technology, but also improve the safety of vehicles in the case of "abnormal driving". But the U.S. auto-manufacturing industry has not seen this layer.

From the above example, we can know that "slightly ignorant" is sometimes more frightening than "completely ignorant". All agencies related to traffic safety, including car manufacturers, highway safety commissions, driver associations, insurance companies, etc., have a misunderstanding that they dare not admit that car accidents are absolutely unavoidable, and think that any car accident is a neglect of safety. . This is the case, just as our grandmothers of the previous generation saw a venereal physician and thought the physician was encouraging immoral sexual relations. This is confusing "right and wrong" with "morality". Precisely because people are unavoidably confused at times, they make inaccurate assumptions, which are the most dangerous and the most difficult to correct.