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Involve your people in decisions or risk failure, says author

Whether you’re a middle manager or a chief executive officer, the path toward
making better decisions usually starts with one word.

Ask.

Seek the opinions and advice of the rank-and-filers directly involved in a
project, says Paul Nutt, an Ohio State University management professor and
author of "Why Decisions Fail: Avoiding the Blunders and Traps That Lead to
Debacles."

By DAVE MURPHY
SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE

Although Nutt’s book focuses on major corporate decisions, he said in an
interview that department managers make the same sorts of mistakes that top
executives do.

"Edicts fail two out of three times," he said. "Participatory decisions succeed
eight out of 10 times."

Nutt said companies fail to involve employees in even simple, low-cost
decisions. When new trucks are purchased at FedEx, for example, the drivers
get no say over who gets the trucks.

"It doesn’t matter a whit to FedEx who gets what truck," he said, "but it
matters a lot to the drivers."

He said companies often could pass off such duties to labor unions or
employee groups, letting rank-and-filers have more control without costing the
company money.

"Companies really don’t take advantage of zero-cost activities. People in
managerial roles only use participation in about one decision out of five."

Other typical examples are bosses who order equipment without checking
with the people who will be using it, Nutt said, and information technology
managers who choose software without finding out the needs and preferences
of those workers who will use it.

Bosses often will say that asking for comments slows the process, he said. "It
actually doesn’t. It speeds things up."

Nutt said those bosses fail to consider how much resistance their unilateral
decision meets from rank-and-filers who feel it is a mistake.

Poor decisions get compounded because companies either won’t admit that a
mistake was made or because managers want to distance themselves from any
mistakes, Nutt said. "The decisions get buried in the back yard because of
blame."

Mistakes also might not get acknowledged because of the fallacy — often fed
by the media — that every situation has an immediate decision, Nutt said.
People sometimes will rush to take action, then never admit that the initial
reaction was wrong.

"Once there’s a cover-up, there’s always a cover-up of the cover-up," he said.
"This is so pervasive in an organization and people are blind to it."

In many cases, Nutt said, when top managers like to second guess and blame
subordinates for mistakes, lower-level workers will keep negative information
to themselves.

"Top managers don’t know that they don’t know. And people are screening
that information out because they don’t want to be held accountable."

Dave Murphy writes about careers for The San Francisco Chronicle.

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/business/84037_davemurphy26.shtml

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