Wednesday, August 4, 2010

Decision Making is Bad!



For reference: Decision is defined as: "the act of making up your mind about something"; "a position or opinion or judgment reached after consideration".

I went to a seminar the other day conducted by Dean Kashiwagi, a professor at Arizona State. The subject was how to do projects better, but his theory a little disarming.

In Life and in projects, risk is greater when a person doesn't have enough information and when they make decisions. We make decisions BECAUSE we don't know the answer to the question.
If we knew the answer. It is the answer not a decision. Decisions are about the level of risk.

He said that predicting outcomes is based on information. He promoted preplanning in projects and in life so that the needed information is uncovered before the project starts. Proper thought reduces decisions and risk.

This is not commonly taught!

He also was not a fan of constant communication of committees. He says, Let those who know what to do, do it and quit second guessing and controlling and slowing down the project!

Think about it?

He also shared this by Peter Drucker:

"There is nothing so useless as doing something efficiently that shouldn't be done at all"

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