4 ms·

The management methodology The article presents is interesting, but a little too neat. It fails to address some of the obvious practical problems that would com

The management methodology The article presents is interesting, but a little too neat. It fails to address some of the obvious practical problems that would come from applying it (though perhaps the book does). In particular, what happens when two reports simply cannot agree? Many business decisions are time-sensitive. They cannot be endlessly deferred until a consensus is reached. And even reasonable people, with access to the same information, can reach opposite conclusions that will never be reconciled. In these cases, somebody has to break the tie, as even a sub-optimal decision may be better than a non-decision. Also, in the matter of strategy, it's true that knowledge workers are better informed within their domain, but they are also usually blind to larger scale factors. The individual soldier knows the ideal outcome is to defeat the enemy, and is best informed as to how to overcome a particular local strong point. But it doesn't follow that he is best placed to make the tactical or strategic decision to attack or not. Nor does it follow that a war-winning strategy will spontaneously emerge.

abakker 7y ago
Agree. I think two things are clear to me - management benefits from decisiveness to a greater degree than accuracy. the Try/fail loop is better than the wait/see loop. The other thing that management benefits from is information asymmetry. the little details from a lot of different parts of the companies do roll up to a good manager, these in turn roll up even higher. Each group may be clamoring for different changes, but a good executive can see the pattern of needs emerge and pinpoint a root cause. It goes without saying that not all executives are good at all things. They're still people.
HellDunkel 7y ago
I share your point of view. The decision making process as described in the piece is such a timewaster and also very, very common in large cooperations. Mainly because management is highly cautious to make decisions at all. They tend to leave it up to „experts“ so they can shift responsibility just in case. This is also the reason why they love to hire consulting agencies and waste so much money on irrelevant powerpoint slides. The author is simply wrong. MGMT should be courageous, resposible, involved, highly informed and reflective!
Retric 7y ago
Bike shedding can be a horrific time waster because there is no best answer. In cases where multiple experts legitimately support both views a vote or random choice is often just as effective as a 3rd party.
eesmith 7y ago
I think it did address that case, with "If it continues, people have to get fired, because they are bad at making decisions." "Bad at making decisions" includes being unable to make time-sensitive business decisions with incomplete and ambiguous information. If there are two reports who cannot agree, then in the methodology given, there's no reason to think their executives can either. So, what's the executive to do? Flip a coin? In that case, can't the two reports decide to flip a coin? Or, bring in more people to advice the executive? In which case, why can't the two reports bring in more people? If they can't, fire the one who won't flip a coin - or fire both if neither can accept a reconciliation plan - since the corporate culture in your scenario includes the ability to make time-sensitive business decisions with incomplete and ambiguous information.
- repolfx 7y ago
  That sounds completely alien to the high output corporate environments I recognise. Sounds like the book may well be a wrong summary of Grove after all. The best executives are people who understand their reports work well enough to do it themselves, if only they had the time. That means an executive absolutely can and should not only break ties, but even override their reports regularly if they aren't making the right decisions (hopefully with training so they come into alignment with the executive's way of thinking). The idea that a man like Steve Jobs did nothing but create vague 'values' is absurd. Yes, he did that. He also "micro-managed" decisions like how many buttons a phone should have, what programming languages developers should use and so on. Without this kind of decision making how should an organisation ever learn how to translate values into concrete decisions? Your depiction of an execute implies a completely passive entity who simply aggregates decisions made below them, with no insight or experience of their own. There certainly are execs like that - ineffective ones.
  - eesmith 7y ago
    There's no way Jobs could have done Bill Atkinson's job well to do QuickDraw, so I don't know what you mean by "well enough to do it themselves." "A completely passive entity" sounds exactly like the example of the Queen's Governor General ratifying everything.
emilfihlman 7y ago
>But it doesn't follow that he is best placed to make the tactical or strategic decision to attack or not. Nor does it follow that a war-winning strategy will spontaneously emerge. Because that argument is made within the confines of the current system that does not allow an individual soldier to contribute on strategy. CEOs are not some magical beings and putting knowledge workers together into that position is theoretically much better. It's just that human ego comes in the way.

abakker 7y ago

Agree. I think two things are clear to me - management benefits from decisiveness to a greater degree than accuracy. the Try/fail loop is better than the wait/see loop. The other thing that management benefits from is information asymmetry. the little details from a lot of different parts of the companies do roll up to a good manager, these in turn roll up even higher. Each group may be clamoring for different changes, but a good executive can see the pattern of needs emerge and pinpoint a root cause. It goes without saying that not all executives are good at all things. They're still people.

HellDunkel 7y ago

I share your point of view. The decision making process as described in the piece is such a timewaster and also very, very common in large cooperations. Mainly because management is highly cautious to make decisions at all. They tend to leave it up to „experts“ so they can shift responsibility just in case. This is also the reason why they love to hire consulting agencies and waste so much money on irrelevant powerpoint slides. The author is simply wrong. MGMT should be courageous, resposible, involved, highly informed and reflective!

Retric 7y ago

Bike shedding can be a horrific time waster because there is no best answer. In cases where multiple experts legitimately support both views a vote or random choice is often just as effective as a 3rd party.

eesmith 7y ago

I think it did address that case, with "If it continues, people have to get fired, because they are bad at making decisions." "Bad at making decisions" includes being unable to make time-sensitive business decisions with incomplete and ambiguous information. If there are two reports who cannot agree, then in the methodology given, there's no reason to think their executives can either. So, what's the executive to do? Flip a coin? In that case, can't the two reports decide to flip a coin? Or, bring in more people to advice the executive? In which case, why can't the two reports bring in more people? If they can't, fire the one who won't flip a coin - or fire both if neither can accept a reconciliation plan - since the corporate culture in your scenario includes the ability to make time-sensitive business decisions with incomplete and ambiguous information.

repolfx 7y ago
That sounds completely alien to the high output corporate environments I recognise. Sounds like the book may well be a wrong summary of Grove after all. The best executives are people who understand their reports work well enough to do it themselves, if only they had the time. That means an executive absolutely can and should not only break ties, but even override their reports regularly if they aren't making the right decisions (hopefully with training so they come into alignment with the executive's way of thinking). The idea that a man like Steve Jobs did nothing but create vague 'values' is absurd. Yes, he did that. He also "micro-managed" decisions like how many buttons a phone should have, what programming languages developers should use and so on. Without this kind of decision making how should an organisation ever learn how to translate values into concrete decisions? Your depiction of an execute implies a completely passive entity who simply aggregates decisions made below them, with no insight or experience of their own. There certainly are execs like that - ineffective ones.
- eesmith 7y ago
  There's no way Jobs could have done Bill Atkinson's job well to do QuickDraw, so I don't know what you mean by "well enough to do it themselves." "A completely passive entity" sounds exactly like the example of the Queen's Governor General ratifying everything.

emilfihlman 7y ago

>But it doesn't follow that he is best placed to make the tactical or strategic decision to attack or not. Nor does it follow that a war-winning strategy will spontaneously emerge. Because that argument is made within the confines of the current system that does not allow an individual soldier to contribute on strategy. CEOs are not some magical beings and putting knowledge workers together into that position is theoretically much better. It's just that human ego comes in the way.