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.Decide once. Latin proverbIn 1996, a merger took place between the Beth Israel and theDeaconess hospitals, two large and well-respected health-care insti-tutions in Boston, Massachusetts.The merged entity broughttogether more than 1,000 highly accomplished physicians and hadrevenues of nearly $1 billion.Senior executives at the newly formedBeth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) hailed the mergeras a  good fit and cited the potential for  tens of millions of dollarsin cost savings.1 Not everyone remained convinced that the dealwould pan out.The Boston Globe commented that  The concept isattractive; the reality may be a bit messy. 2The early years of the marriage did not go smoothly, to say theleast.The financial losses escalated rapidly, topping $50 million peryear in fiscal years 1998 through 2001.Several CEOs tried and failed141142 WHY GREAT LEADERS DON T TAKE YES FOR AN ANSWERto execute a turnaround.The Massachusetts attorney general beganto pressure the board of directors to consider selling the institution toa for-profit health-care firm.Amid this turmoil, Paul Levy took overas chief executive in January 2002.As Levy assessed the situation, henoted that prior management had done a great deal of work analyzingthe hospital s problems and discussing alternative proposals designedto restore the organization s financial health.Several consulting firmshad performed extensive studies, and they had provided sound rec-ommendations to the medical center s senior management team.Yet,substantive organizational changes never materialized.The organiza-tion seemed to be  all talk, no action. Levy explained:This was not a question of not knowing what to do.Everyone knew what had to be done.This was anabsolute failure to execute, which, ultimately, is a fail-ure of leadership& BIDMC leadership was simplyunable to reach an agreement on a programmatic planfor the hospital& I define the problem of the BIDMCas a curious inability to decide.3The BIDMC may sound like a particularly dysfunctional organi-zation, but in fact, many organizations are plagued by the  curiousinability to decide. In some cases, managers engage in plenty ofdebate, and they simply can never come to a consensus.The leaderfails to bring deliberations to a close, make a decision, and move for-ward with a plan of action.The organization remains frozen in itstracks, while competitors gain the upper hand.The managementteam becomes a  debating society, or they find themselvesembroiled in  analysis paralysis. 4 In other instances, a sense of falseconsensus emerges during decision processes.That is, people tendnot to surface objections during meetings.Instead, they work aroundthe decision process, laboring behind the scenes to kill projects orderail decisions in the early stages of implementation.The leaderthinks a decision was made and is being implemented, but soonCHAPTER 6 " THE DYNAMICS OF INDECISION 143thereafter, he discovers that the course of action has not beenenacted.In these organizations, decisions are apparently made, butthey never survive long enough to be executed.Napoleon Bonaparte once said that  Nothing is more difficult,and therefore more precious than to be able to decide. He recog-nized that many leaders find themselves unable to take decisiveaction when confronted with ambiguous information, dynamic envi-ronmental conditions, and conflicting advice from others.They can-not bring debates to a close, choose a course of action in a timelymanner, and build the commitment and shared understandingrequired to implement their plans effectively.In this chapter, weexamine why organizations experience the  curious inability todecide. Specifically, we examine the patterns of behavior, oftendeeply embedded in the organization s culture and processes, whichcreate a systematic inability to reach closure in the decision-makingprocess.In the two chapters that follow, we examine how leaders canovercome these barriers, build commitment and shared understand-ing, and reach closure in a timely manner.A Culture of IndecisionPeople often conclude that organizational indecisiveness and inactionsimply reflects the problematic leadership style or personality of aparticular executive.They point to managers who are irresolute,undisciplined, and/or overly cautious.Those descriptors may verywell apply to some executives who find it difficult to reach closure oncritical decisions.However, the phenomenon of a  curious inability todecide often stretches far beyond the leadership capabilities of a par-ticular individual.In many cases, it tends to be a pattern of behaviorthat permeates the entire organization.Groups cannot arrive at a con-sensus because dysfunctional habits of dialogue and decision makinghave become second nature to many members of the organization.144 WHY GREAT LEADERS DON T TAKE YES FOR AN ANSWERThose habits manifest themselves through the manner in which dia-logues and deliberations take place at all levels of the firm, in manydifferent types of formal and informal teams and committees.Ram Charan, a renowned adviser to the CEOs of many Fortune500 firms, describes the problem as a  culture of indecision. 5 By cul-ture, I mean the often taken-for-granted assumptions of how thingswork in an organization, of how members approach and think aboutproblems.6 In other words, certain patterns of behavior graduallybecome embedded in the way that work gets done on a daily basis,and sometimes those patterns lead to a chronic inability to reach clo-sure on critical decisions.Over time, those patterns of behaviorbecome taken for granted, and people engage in them without muchforethought.In my research, I have found that such dysfunctionaldecision-making cultures come in three forms: a culture of no, a cul-ture of yes, and a culture of maybe.Each comes with its own pre-dictable and easily identifiable patterns of interaction and dialogue,and each has its own underlying causes.Yet, they all lead to a similaroutcome a chronic inability to move from conflict to consensus,from deliberation to action.The Culture of NoWhen Louis Gerstner became IBM s CEO in 1993, he faced an enor-mous challenge.The company s performance had declined dramati-cally, after decades as the dominant behemoth in the computerindustry.The company s share price had declined by 70 percent overthe past 6 years [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]