Organizational Development: A Manual for Managers and ... - FPDL

Rational decision making is based on seeking alternative ways to act, weighting them and
identifying the best one - that presumably brings the best result with the highest probability, fewer
risks and comparably less cost. Rational decision making actually includes ‘two choices in one’ –
the best potential goal and the best possible way to arrive at it. And this choice is always bounded
by politics. (See Chapter 1.2.)
The process of decision-making may sometimes look very simple – something like intuitive insight.
In the beginning of the 1960’s, mathematicians who studied computer applications for optimizing
planning processes, were insulted by the discovery that an experienced manager can make an
almost optimal decision without any calculation at all - merely by insight.
Animals never do any stupid things, because they always make rational decisions instinctively. It is
the law of nature. Of course, they may make mistakes from the human point of view – because of
limited information available, misinterpretation, or primitive calculation – but all that has nothing to
do with the procedure itself – it is always a rational choice. Just try to imagine a wolf that would set
a goal (e.g. to eat a chicken for lunch) before it sees a realistic way to reach it. Or imagine a horse
that would not estimate the risks of failure, probable punishment and possibility for reward when
jumping over a barrier versus running around it.
Doing stupid things is a very human feature. Alas, it costs a lot, but enables learning. If doing
things right brings expected results and does not require changing the mental map, then what is
the lesson learned? Realizing one’s mistakes fuels development, on both the individual and
organizational levels.
The way decisions are made in an organization, and decisions related to organizational
development issues in particular, is very important. A lot of books have been published on the
topic. One of the recent issues of Harvard Business Review (January 2006) is entirely about
organizational decision-making. It gives a history of decision-making approaches and an overview
of most modern concepts. In short, as our experience also indicates – the best way to make
decisions is in collaboration with those who are concerned and who will need to implement those
decisions later. The key word is dialog (one of the best readings on this topic is a book of Issacs,
1999).
In most cases, when participants from an organization worked together during a workshop to
identify their problems and find solutions for them, using cross-functional teams with a good
balance of power and expertise, proved to be very effective. Decisions that were prepared by
specially created task-force groups - and initially negotiated with everyone who might be affected
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