Preface

On April 4, 2011, Eric Schmidt stepped down as Google’s CEO, a position that he had held for a decade. Google co-founder Larry Page took over as chief executive. Page made a number of changes at the firm that made huge headlines. He reorganized the management team, shut down or combined approximately 30 products, launched Google+, and acquired Motorola Mobility. Page made another key move that was less recognized and understood by outsiders. He set out to reform decision-making processes at Google. Page worried about creeping bureaucracy, and he wanted to enhance the speed of decision making. He explained, “There are, basically, no companies that make good slow decisions. There are only companies that make good fast decisions....As companies get bigger, they tend to slow down decision making, and that’s pretty tragic.”¹ While exaggerating a bit for emphasis, Page sent a clear message: He wanted Google to behave more like a startup than the large organization it had become.

How did Page reshape decision-making processes at the firm? Google’s new CEO did not want to waste people’s time with meetings that lacked a clear agenda, did not have the right people in the room, and lacked a clear set of goals and desired outcomes. Therefore, he outlined some new rules for how and when decision-oriented meetings should take place. Kristen Gil, Google’s vice president of Operations, explained: “Those meetings should consist of no more than 10 people, and everyone who attends should provide input. If someone has no input to give, then perhaps they shouldn’t be there. That’s ok—attending meetings isn’t a badge of honor.”² Put simply, Page wanted lean, agile teams—not giant committees consisting of many people who brought little to the table. Page also directed groups to clarify member roles when they came together to make a choice. In particular, members needed to have a strong shared understanding about who had the authority to make the final decision. If the ultimate decision maker could not attend a meeting, then perhaps the meeting should not take place.

Page changed the environment, too. He sought to promote more information sharing and collaboration among senior executives. He recognized that, as Google expanded, members of the senior management team spent less time with one another. Executives worked in different buildings, traveled often, and interacted more frequently with their subordinates rather than with their peers. As the senior team members interacted with each other less often, decision making at the top slowed down. Therefore, Page created a “bullpen” at Google’s headquarters, and he asked senior executives to work together in that setting several hours per week. He wanted to replicate the startup environment, where founders often work in very close quarters together. He hoped that the bullpen atmosphere would promote collaboration, stimulate informal dialogue, and speed up decision making.

Time will tell whether Page’s changes will enable Google to sustain and enhance its competitive advantage. In all types of organizations—from business enterprises to public institutions to sports franchises—leaders often must wait a long time to see the results of the decisions they make. In a turbulent world filled with ambiguity, leaders will not always make the right calls, regardless of their acumen. However, they can take a hard look at the process they are employing to make critical choices, as Page has done. Changing the way decisions are made will not guarantee success, but it can improve the likelihood that management teams will arrive at sound and decisions in a timely manner.

Think for a moment about a decision that you and your team or organization is currently trying to make. Have you considered multiple alternatives? Have you surfaced and tested your assumptions carefully? Did dissenting views emerge during your deliberations, and have you given those ideas proper consideration? Are you building high levels of commitment and shared understanding among those who will be responsible for implementing the decision? The answers to these questions—and a number of others—help us to evaluate the quality of an organization’s decision-making process. The core premise of this book is that a high-quality process tends to enhance the probability of achieving positive outcomes. Therefore, a leader can have an enormous impact through his management of an organization’s decision-making processes. Good process does not simply mean sound analytics (that is, the best use of the latest strategy framework or quantitative financial evaluation technique). Good process entails the astute management of the social, political, and emotional aspects of decision making as well. Decision making in complex organizations is far from a purely intellectual exercise, as most experienced managers know. Thus, an effective leader does not just produce positive results by weighing in on the content of critical choices in a wise and thoughtful manner; he also has a substantial impact by shaping and influencing how those decisions are made.

In this book, I make two fundamental arguments with regard to how leaders can enhance the quality of their decision-making processes. First, leaders must cultivate constructive conflict in order to enhance the level of critical and divergent thinking, while simultaneously building consensus in order to facilitate the timely and efficient implementation of the choices they make. Managing the tension between conflict and consensus is one of the most fundamental challenges of leadership. By consensus, I do not mean unanimity, like-mindedness, or even pervasive agreement. Instead, I define consensus to mean a high level of commitment and shared understanding among the people involved in the decision. Leaders can build buy-in and collective comprehension without appeasing everyone on their teams or making decisions by majority vote. This book explains how leaders can do that.

The second fundamental argument put forth in this book is that effective leaders can and should spend time “deciding how to decide.” In short, creating high-quality decision-making processes necessitates a good deal of forethought. When faced with a complex and pressing issue, most of us want to dive right in to solve the problem. Given our expertise in a particular field, we have a strong desire to apply our knowledge and devise an optimal solution. However, leadership does not entail a single-minded focus on the content of the decisions that we face. It also involves some thought regarding how a group or an organization should go about making a critical choice. Deciding how to decide involves an assessment of who should be involved in the deliberations, what type of interpersonal climate we would like to foster, how individuals should communicate with one another, and the extent and type of control that the leader will exert during the process. In this book, you see that leaders have a number of levers they can employ to design more effective decision-making processes and to shape how those processes unfold over time. I argue that leaders should be directive when it comes to influencing the way in which decisions are made in their groups or organizations, without trying to dominate or micromanage the substance of the discussion and evaluation that takes place. Spending time deciding how to decide enhances the probability of managing conflict and consensus effectively.

This book offers practical guidance—grounded in extensive academic research—for leaders who want to improve the way they make complex, high-stakes choices. One need not be a general manager or chief executive officer to benefit from the concepts described here. Any leader of a group of people—no matter the level in the organization—can apply the ideas examined in this book. Scholars and students too can benefit from this book because it offers new conceptual frameworks about organizational decision making, integrates existing theory in novel ways, and introduces a set of rich case studies that illuminate interesting issues with relevance to both theory and practice.

The second body of research for this book involved a survey of 78 business unit presidents across different firms listed in the April 2000 edition of the Fortune 500. Whereas the prior field research had enabled me to gather extensive amounts of qualitative data regarding a few senior management teams and a small set of strategic decision processes, this large sample survey-based study provided an opportunity to identify patterns in decision making across many firms.

The third major research project comprised in-depth interviews with 35 general managers of firms or business units in the Boston area across many different industries. In each interview, I asked the managers to compare two decisions that they had made—one that they considered successful and another that they did not. The study enabled me to focus very closely on how leaders thought about process choices that they had made as they were making critical decisions.

Finally, the research involved numerous case studies of particular decisions and organizations. A distinguishing feature of this research is that it includes cases from many disparate settings, not just business enterprises. I have examined decision making by mountain-climbing expeditions, firefighting teams, NASA managers and engineers, government policy makers, and various nonprofit institutions. The varied nature of these studies has enabled me to develop a rich understanding of how leaders and organizations make decisions in different settings and circumstances.

Two case studies deserve special mention here because my colleagues and I spent an extraordinary amount of time examining those situations, using novel techniques both for gathering the data and presenting the ideas to students. David Garvin and I conducted an in-depth study of Paul Levy, the CEO of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston. The case, which we impart to students in multimedia format, proves distinctive because we tracked Levy’s turnaround of the organization in real time from the moment he took over as the chief executive. We interviewed him on video every two to four weeks during his first six months on the job, examined internal memos and e-mail communications between him and his staff, and tracked media coverage of the turnaround. This unique study gave us an up-close look at how a leader made decisions during a radical change effort, as well as how he altered the rather dysfunctional culture of decision making that existed in the hospital at the time.

The second case study that merits specific mention involves an examination of decision making at NASA as it pertains to the Columbia space shuttle accident in 2003. Amy Edmondson, Richard Bohmer, and I have studied this incident in detail, both through an exhaustive examination of the internal e-mails, meeting transcripts, memos, and presentations that were made public after the accident as well as through interviews with members of the Columbia Accident Investigation Board, a former shuttle astronaut, an ex-NASA engineer, and an expert on the 1986 Challenger accident. That study, which we also present to students in multimedia format, is distinctive because we have documented critical events during the final mission from the perspective of six key managers and engineers. By trying to understand the decision making that took place from the vantage point of people at different levels and in disparate units of the organization, we have gained some unique insights into how and why certain choices were made. Since the publication of the first edition of this book, my understanding of this tragedy has increased. I have visited NASA several times. In addition, I have met and learned a great deal from Rodney Rocha, one of the key engineers involved in the Columbia mission, as well as Brigadier General Duane Deal, a member of the Columbia Accident Investigation Board.

Taken together, this extensive body of research provides the foundation for this book. This work employs a variety of research methodologies and draws upon several academic disciplines. Throughout this book, I also draw on existing theory developed by other scholars and cite the findings from empirical research conducted by others. Again, those theories and studies come in many different flavors; the book does not restrict itself to one particular academic domain in trying to explain how and why organizations and their leaders make decisions more or less effectively. This analysis aspires to be truly cross-disciplinary.

Since the publication of the first edition in 2005, I have continued to study, teach, and consult about leadership and decision making. This new edition includes the findings from new research by me and other scholars around the world. It also incorporates what I have learned through the development and delivery of leadership development programs at many companies around the world. You will see new examples, case studies, and research findings throughout the book.

Part II—encompassing Chapter 3, “An Absence of Candor,” Chapter 4, “Stimulating the Clash of Ideas,” and Chapter 5, “Keeping Conflict Constructive,” and Chapter 6, “A Better Devil’s Advocate”—focuses on the task of managing conflict. Chapter 3 describes the factors that inhibit candid dialogue and debate in organizations. It distinguishes between “hard” and “soft” barriers that block the discussion of dissenting views. “Hard” barriers consist of structural aspects of the organization such as the demographic composition of the senior management team, the complexity of reporting relationships, and ambiguity in job/role definitions. The “soft” barriers comprise things such as differences in status, the language system used to discuss failures in the organization, and certain taken-for-granted assumptions about how people should behave. Chapter 4 explains how leaders can stimulate heightened levels of conflict in their firms. It describes a variety of mechanisms and practices that leaders can choose to employ, and it describes the strengths and weaknesses of each approach. Chapter 5 tackles the perplexing challenge of how leaders can encourage people to “disagree without being disagreeable.” This chapter offers a useful set of tools and strategies for how leaders can keep conflict constructive.

A new chapter, Chapter 6, examines the devil’s advocacy technique in much more depth than the first edition. After reading the book, many individuals had questions about how to implement this technique effectively. Some people pointed out, rightfully, that devil’s advocates often do more harm than good. They can put people on the defensive, create a very negative atmosphere, and cause costly delays. Therefore, in this new edition, I provide an extensive examination of how organizations can use devil’s advocates and how they can apply this technique more effectively.

Part III concentrates on how managers create consensus within their organizations without compromising the level of divergent and creative thinking. Chapter 7, “The Dynamics of Indecision,” examines why some organizations become paralyzed by indecision. We learn why leaders often find it difficult to build commitment and shared understanding, or why sometimes they find themselves with a “false consensus” that unravels rather quickly when they try to execute a chosen course of action. Chapter 8, “Fair and Legitimate Process,” focuses on two critical building blocks of consensus: procedural fairness and legitimacy. It explains how leaders can create processes in which people will cooperate effectively in the implementation effort even if they do not agree with the final decision. Chapter 9, “Reaching Closure,” addresses how leaders can move to closure during a contentious set of deliberations. It describes how leaders manage the interplay between divergent and convergent thinking so as to bring a decision process to its conclusion in a timely fashion. Specifically, the chapter outlines a model of achieving closure through an approach of seeking “small wins” at various points during a complex and perhaps controversial decision-making process.

Part IV consists of Chapter 10, “Leading with Restraint,” which reflects on how this book’s philosophy of leadership and decision making differs from conventional views held by many managers. Specifically, I distinguish between two different approaches to “taking charge” when confronted with a difficult decision. The traditional approach puts the onus on leaders to provide the solutions to many of their organization’s pressing problems. They need to “take charge” and act decisively. The alternative approach proposed here calls for leaders to take an active role in shaping, influencing, and directing the process by which their organizations make high-stakes choices, without micromanaging the content of the decision. Effective leaders welcome others’ input and acknowledge that they do not have all the answers, but they still remain firmly in charge and retain the right and duty to make the final decision. However, they understand the importance of creating and leading an effective collective dialogue, in which others have a great deal of freedom to engage in a lively and vigorous debate about the issues and problems facing the organization. In short, this brand of take-charge leadership entails a disciplined focus on how choices are made, not simply what the organization should do.

At the conclusion of this book, detailed notes cite the research studies—mine and those of other scholars—that support the propositions and principles expounded in the main text. At times, the endnotes expand upon the ideas described in the main text, explain important caveats, or offer additional compelling examples of a particular phenomenon. My hope is that the endnotes offer useful guidance and direction for scholars and practitioners who want to investigate certain topics in more depth.

Throughout this book, you will recognize a strong recurring theme—namely, that leaders must strive for a delicate balance of assertiveness and restraint. As you will see, the critical issue for leaders becomes not whether they should be forceful and directive as they make strategic choices but how they ought to exert their influence and control over the decision-making process. As you begin to read the pages that follow, I hope that you take time to reflect on past choices and to scrutinize the way in which you went about making those decisions. Moreover, I hope that you will consider experimenting with the techniques described here so as to not only enhance your probability of making sound choices, but also increase the likelihood that others will dedicate themselves enthusiastically to the execution of your plans.

2. www.thinkwithgoogle.com/quarterly/speed/start-up-speed-kristen-gil.html, accessed January 24, 2012. In the memo posted at this site, Google VP Kristen Gil provides a comprehensive explanation of all the changes that Page made to enhance decision making at the firm. www.thinkwithgoogle.com/quarterly/speed/start-up-speed-kristen-gil.html, accessed January 24, 2012.