25 of 32 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Is the Think Again framework in need of rethinking?, May 31, 2009
This review is from: Think Again: Why Good Leaders Make Bad Decisions and How to Keep it From Happening to You (Hardcover)
The authors of "Think Again," impeccably credentialed and versed in management strategy, are eminently qualified to scrutinize the performance of executives and senior managers in making organizational decisions. In their book they discuss numerous cases involving high-ranking decision makers. It is quite sobering, though not at all surprising, to see so many atrocious decisions consistently being made by people who are supposed to be masters of that craft. Evidently, these professionals are nowhere near as proficient as they are usually deemed to be. In view of the prevalence of this situation, it is hard to avoid concluding that, on the whole, top decision makers are no better at doing their job --making the right decision-- than would be a randomly selected employee drawn from the ranks of their own organization. Even more troubling is the fact that no other professional field of endeavor seems to suffer from such an appalling condition.
The book tackles this disconcerting problem by proposing a framework which consists of three parts: a description of how our brains make decisions and how it can be tricked into false judgments, an explanation of four posited conditions under which flawed thinking is likely to happen, and a set of safeguards prescribing how to counterbalance the four sources of error. The brain is presented as a pattern recognition apparatus that employs emotional tagging and one-plan-at-a-time processing to make sense of what's going on in the world and devise a response to the perceived challenges. Most of that processing, however, is conducted beyond the realm of consciousness, so the hapless (and ostensible) decision maker is in an extremely weak position to question the validity of the brain's verdicts or its torrent of neural decrees. The clinical evidence sustaining this point is striking: V.S. Ramachandran's notable work in behavioral neurology is cited on several occasions. (See
Phantoms in the Brain: Probing the Mysteries of the Human Mind.)
Decisions go wrong, state the authors, because of two factors: (1) an individual or group makes an error of judgment (which follows from the above) and (2) the decision process fails to correct the error. Four sources of error, called red flag conditions, are identified: misleading experiences, misleading prejudgments, inappropriate self-interest, and inappropriate attachments (yes, of the type denounced by Siddhartha Gautama). The authors then advance four categories of safeguard to counter the inevitable errors: provide decision makers with new experiences or data and analysis, create group debates which challenge biases, institute governance teams to protect against flawed judgments, and set up extra monitoring processes to track the progress of important decisions.
That is all very fine. But is it an adequate description of and, more importantly, a reliable solution to the problem of faulty managerial decision making? Let's see.
Consider one of the cases discussed in the book: John F. Kennedy's handling of the Cuban missile crisis of October 1962. According to the authors, the preceding year's Bay of Pigs fiasco taught Kennedy a lot, namely, how not to wage war or rattle sabers. This time around, "Kennedy recognized the red flag conditions and created a process that reduced the risk of a flawed decision." Specifically, "Kennedy set up a decision process to create room for rigorous and multifaceted debate" by forming the ExComm committee of senior advisers. "President Kennedy rejected early options involving air strikes or invasion, asking ExComm to think again to see whether there was a solution that reduced the risks of nuclear war. As a result, they came up with what proved to be the best option: a blockade of Cuba." (The quotations are from pp. 159 and 160.)
Proved to be the best option?
The 40th Anniversary Conference of the Cuban Missile Crisis held in Havana, Cuba on 10-12 October of 2002 revealed the following: (Source: National Security Archive, George Washington University)
1. US intelligence never located the nuclear warheads for the Soviet missiles in Cuba during the crisis, and only 33 of what photography later showed was a total of 42 medium-range ballistic missiles.
2. The US Navy dropped a series of "signaling depth charges" (equivalent to hand grenades) on a Soviet submarine at the quarantine line. According to the Soviet signals intelligence officer on the receiving end inside submarine B-59, Vadim Orlov, the depth charges felt like "sledgehammers on a metal barrel." Unbeknownst to the Navy, the submarine carried a nuclear-tipped torpedo with orders that allowed its use if the submarine was "hulled" (hole in the hull from depth charges or surface fire).
3. Exhausted by weeks undersea in difficult circumstances and worried that the U.S. Navy's practice depth charges were dangerous explosives, senior officers on several of the submarines, notably B-59 and B-130, were rattled enough to talk about firing their nuclear torpedoes, whose 15 kiloton explosive yields approximated the bomb that devastated Hiroshima in August 1945.
That nuclear war was averted was due to extraordinary prudence on the part of the Soviet leadership and naval commanders mixed with an abundance of sheer luck, not to a debate-based decision process on the American side which in several respects was clueless as to pivotal facts. One cannot conclude that just because the outcome turned out fortuitous the decision --or the decision maker(s)-- was therefore correct. Had Washington or New York been blown off the map, this book would almost certainly have not declared that ExComm "came up with what proved to be the best option." The correctness of a decision cannot be predicated on the uncontrollable occurrence of a specific favorable outcome.
The authors go on to claim: "Kennedy found a way of allowing Khrushchev to back down without losing face, by using backdoor Russian contacts to secure a trade: the withdrawal of US missiles stationed in Turkey for Soviet agreement to dismantle the missiles in Cuba." (p. 160) They repeat that claim on page 168: "... helped him [Kennedy] come up with the idea of trading the missiles in Turkey for those in Cuba." Those assertions are incorrect. In his letter to Kennedy of 27 October 1962, Khrushchev states: (Source: Letter From Chairman Khrushchev to President Kennedy, October 27, 1962, John F. Kennedy Presidential Library & Museum)
"Your missiles are located in Britain, are located in Italy, and are aimed against us. Your missiles are located in Turkey.
"You are disturbed over Cuba. You say that this disturbs you because it is 90 miles by sea from the coast of the United States of America. But Turkey adjoins us; our sentries patrol back and forth and see each other. Do you consider, then, that you have the right to demand security for your own country and the removal of the weapons you call offensive, but do not accord the same right to us? You have placed destructive missile weapons, which you call offensive, in Turkey, literally next to us. How then can recognition of our equal military capacities be reconciled with such unequal relations between our great states?"
"I therefore make this proposal: We are willing to remove from Cuba the means which you regard as offensive. We are willing to carry this out and to make this pledge in the United Nations. Your representatives will make a declaration to the effect that the United States, for its part, considering the uneasiness and anxiety of the Soviet State, will remove its analogous means from Turkey. Let us reach agreement as to the period of time needed by you and by us to bring this about. And, after that, persons entrusted by the United Nations Security Council could inspect on the spot the fulfillment of the pledges made."
The point to be made here is this: even the authors, who --individually and as a monitoring team-- are deliberately focusing their best efforts at explaining and promoting the Think Again framework as the recommended means of safeguarding against errors of judgment, failed to catch and correct the error. Why should one expect things to be any different in the executive suite? This lapse calls into question the credibility of the entire framework, particularly when it comes to real-time situations where the available information is rarely unambiguous, complete, properly structured, sufficiently precise or demonstrably accurate.
Consider another case from the book: Paul Wolfowitz's dalliance with questionable ethics at the World Bank. True to their framework, the authors attribute Wolfowitz's conduct to inappropriate attachments (pp. 129-34). Perhaps this was far too generous a judgment. Other possibilities spring to mind, including outright corruption and, if Wolfowitz's role in instigating the still ongoing war in Iraq is allowed to figure in the assessment, plain old managerial incompetence. The possibility arises that by pigeonholing the faculty of reason with preconfigured templates of red flags and safeguards, the Think Again framework may actually hinder the process of procuring accurate interpretations of reality necessary for unbiased and efficacious decision making.
That might explain why the authors' judgment of Admiral Yamamoto Isoroku in the Battle of Midway (chapter 4) seems biased. Their portrayal of Yamamoto as an inflexible strategist bent on carrying out his pet plan irrespective of the concerns of his superiors (which was a factor, though by no means the only one nor the most critical, as shown below) is compatible with the framework's one-plan-at-a-time assumption. But never is it mentioned or taken into account (1) that Lt. Col. Jimmy Doolittle's air raid...
Read more ›
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Learn how to avoid making poor decisions, June 24, 2009
This review is from: Think Again: Why Good Leaders Make Bad Decisions and How to Keep it From Happening to You (Hardcover)
"Most leaders make bad decisions. Even great leaders can make bad decisions." The introduction to "Think Again" leads with this statement. The authors Fnklestein, Whitehead and Campbell then proceed to show why. Most importantly, they provide a framework for recognising when such bad decisions may occur and how to safeguard against such decisions.
The book is in three parts - How your brain makes decisions; Why decisions go wrong; and Red flags and safeguards (for recognising and preventing bad decisions).
Part 1, reviews much of the research and current thinking on how the brain works. One particular point of interest that the authors note, is our propensity to tag all our major decisions with emotional tags - tags which can and often do, override rational thinking.
Part 2 chronicles many of the wider known decisions that have proven to be wrong, such as Kennedy's Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba, Wang Computers' disastrous (the company now no longer exists) decision to opt for their own proprietary operating system rather than adopt the industry IBM PC standard, and Margaret Thatcher's Poll Tax debacle. But the authors also provide many case studies of practising managers who have made mistakes in areas such as change management, taking on new roles, and new product or production processes etc. These should prove most insightful to managers at all levels.
All of the cases in Part 2 are used to illustrate the four reasons for bad decision making - misleading experiences, misleading pre-judgments, inappropriate self-interest and inappropriate attachments. The authors describe these as potential "red flags". In addition to cases, the authors describe a number of studies to demonstrate their point. One that stood out was on "inappropriate self-interest" where 139 experienced auditors (not students) were asked to evaluate a case study to ensure the firm met certain standards. Half the group were told they had been hired by the firm to do this analysis and the other half told they had been hired by another firm wishing to trade with this firm. Those who had been told they were hired by the firm were 30% more likely to find the firm met the standards than those hired by the potential customer!
Part 3 then describes the four "safeguard" strategies for preventing bad decisions - experience, data and analysis; group debate and challenge; governance; and monitoring. None of these will be new to the reader. However, it is the practical and structured way the authors show how these safeguards can be used, that make this book really worthwhile.
There's also a Database of Cases and a Database of Safeguards with examples that summarise how the red flags have been identified and the safeguards can be used in practice. These make an excellent "how to" and easy reference source for practising managers.
This is a good book. It's a dense book - and it needs to be, for the subject is complex. The authors have done a great job simplifying the subject and at the same time providing us with a practical way of identifying (red flags) when we might be likely to make a bad decision and how to help avoid (safeguards) making one. It would be a very useful text for any serious management student and will also be highly useful to any manager serious about minimising the chance of making poor decisions.
Bob Selden, author What To Do When You Become The Boss: How new managers become successful managers
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Part Neuroscience, Part Intuition., September 24, 2010
This review is from: Think Again: Why Good Leaders Make Bad Decisions and How to Keep it From Happening to You (Hardcover)
First of all, if you haven't read any other titles on neuro-science or decision-making, this will be a good introduction.
I gave it a 2-star rating because I have read books like:
How We Decide,
Why We Make Mistakes: How We Look Without Seeing, Forget Things in Seconds, and Are All Pretty Sure We Are Way Above Average,
Sway: The Irresistible Pull of Irrational Behavior and I found these titles more informative and engaging. If you have similar stuff on your bookshelf, don't bother reading this one.
This book tries to do 3 thihgs:
1. How we make decisions and why are we prone to making wrong decisions.
2. What are the situations under which we are most vulnerable in making a flawed decision.
3. What can we do about it.
For starters, 95% of what is written about 1. is a shallower and briefer reproduction of the books I mentioned above.
For 2., it tries to teach us how to spot "red flags" i.e. misleading experience, misleading judgments, inappropriate self-interest and inappropriate emotions. (Which, I think, could be summarized in one word: biases). Basically, it says that we have to beware of our biases, which are generated from our previous experiences and emotions, because they work subconsicously.
For 3., it basically tells us what we already know: we should confront the decision makers with alternative views and options and arguments against their initial judgment; we should discuss and debate before making important decisions; we should have corporate governance mechanisms to counterbalance the key decision-makers' views and we need to track the outcomes of the decisions in order to spot problems early. Aren't all these intuitive?
The reality is, even if we have all the above "practical suggestions" in place, there's still no guarantee that the decision-makers - usually those with great power and a huge ego - to listen to other people's opinion and take heed of contrary data that is staring at their faces. And the truth is, risk and contrary views are inherent in every decision. It is very likely that even after considering, thoroughly and whole-heartedly, all the options available, people calling the shots would stick to their own judgments - with a much stronger claim: now that they have already discussed and considered alternative courses of actions.
Not that practical after all.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No
