Description
The document does the an depth review of HBR Classic article "Conquering a Culture of Indecision".
Critical Review of HBR Classic Article
“Conquering a Culture of Indecision”
[Year]
Critical Review “CONQUERING A CULTURE OF INDECISION” BY RAM CHARAN
Executive Summary The author, Ram Charan (one of the world’s preeminent counselors to CEOs) has shown through his study how organizations can improve their organizational effectiveness by incorporating a corporate culture of “Decision Dialogues” which aims to eliminate indecision in decision making. The main objective of the article is to discover how business leaders can converse in ways that encourage candor, multiple perspectives, and clarity about who will do what to implement decisions. The article clearly demonstrates with examples the components contributing to decisive dialogues. These conversations consist of a genuine search for answers and the ability to tolerate truth and a range of brainstorming views, as well as offering a course of action for implementing the decision in question. The central theme of the article is how organizations can use social operating mechanisms as a tool to overcome a culture of indecisions. The example of Fred Hassan’s management at Pharmacia is given to show that a culture of indecision can be transformed by keeping the social networks and operating mechanisms open with honest and accurate communication. The article gives clear insights as how a culture of decisive decision culture has contributed to the success of top organizations.
An Insight into the results, strengths & weaknesses The article is based on experiences that the author himself has been in during his career as an adviser to large organizations and their leaders. The author has presented his viewpoints
and strengthened his arguments through examples. The author has included in his article organizations from a wide spectrum such as GE, Pharmacia, Electronic Data Systems. By doing this, the article highlights the fact that this philosophy is not restricted to a particular sector or organization. The article finally concludes that the top management is the key driver in making a culture of decisive decision making, as effective change can be brought about by effective leadership. The author outlines concrete steps that top management should incorporate in the social operating mechanism of decisive corporate culture. The characteristics, which include openness, candor, informality and closure, ensure that there is a setting in place where the dialogue can be converted to action. The article shows the major reasons why majority of the dialogues are merely energy drains. Scenarios like dangling dialogues, information clogs, piecemeal perspectives and free for all do not result in effective decisions. They merely result in loss of time, energy, resources and all finally totaling up to additional costs i.e. money. The author illustrates a point that he repeatedly stresses to his clients, which is structure divides, social operating mechanisms integrate. But at the same time he also clarifies his view that he is not against structure as it is essential to divide tasks and responsibilities without which an organization would not be able to function in the current environment. The point he stresses on is that social operating mechanisms are additional functions that an organization must have in order to direct the various activities within a structure towards a common objective. Ultimately, changing a culture of indecision is a matter of leadership. It’s a matter of asking the relevant questions and this requires all the listening skills, business acumen and operational experience that a corporate leader can summon.
The article is carefully pieced together to offer as much diversity as possible and at the same time to cover important and interesting examples of what needs to be done to conquer a culture of indecisions. It helps to correlate to the understanding that to remain competitive in a dynamic environment, organizations need to have cultures where decisions have to be taken effectively and quickly. By using the example of Pharmacia, the author has clearly explained how social operating mechanisms help in integrating different structures of the organizations and creating cross functional effectiveness. He goes on to show how a major drug discovery was a result of this process. Through the GE example, the article also shows how decisive dialogues and social operating mechanisms can give a new direction and hence a competitive advantage to the organization. We also felt as the examples were personal in nature, it helped the author to put his viewpoints in a more clear and lucid manner. More importantly, we felt that the model and framework of social operating mechanism mentioned is actionable which is what makes it an extremely valuable change agent. It’s extremely hard to give criticism to such enjoyable reading from well-known and brilliant management thinkers. The only point we think that could have also been highlighted would be if the article had also related to how these changes in culture have led to organizations from a mechanistic, centralized structure to more of an organic, decentralized one. This would help to show the advantages of using social operating mechanisms and hence a more decisive decision making culture. The views in the article could have been further reinforced if it had included some illustrations of cases where a culture of indecisive decision making had lead to failures in organizations.
Our Views
The views mentioned in the article are very much relevant in the Indian context as well. For example, decision making in IT (which forms a large part of the Indian economy), is pretty messy. By definition, integration and standardization are at odds with quick, customized delivery. As a result, in most organizations the interests of the enterprise take a backseat to the more immediate need to improve business alignment and partnership. Within IT, this conflict is internalized, and conference rooms and offices are filled with well-intentioned applications, architecture and infrastructure professionals questioning each other's motives. In the heat of the battle, there's little that can be done other than ensure that the meetings are productive and the right decisions are made. This article clearly suggests steps which organizations can use to cultivate a culture of decisive decision making. Another example from the Indian context which shows how important Indian organization considers social operating mechanisms is that of Intel India. Intel India strongly follow the philosophy – “In the coming years, Gen Y (Generation Y workers) will be the largest constituency in an organization. Not having our social operating mechanisms catering to their sensibilities and values will mean inability on the part of companies to win the most critical resources--people.” This clearly shows the importance they give to their maintaining a proper social operating mechanism. On a similar line of thought, Sridhar Jayanthi (VP of Engineering – India Operations, McAfee Engineering centre) also writes in his article “Follow through and Closure” on the importance that companies and management need to give to understand the principles of follow through and closure in order to make efficient and quick decisions. He provides suggestions as to what employees and management can do to help to eradicate a culture of indecisive decision making. These examples show how Ram Charan’s viewpoints are being appreciated in the Indian context.
The viewpoints and methodologies mentioned in the article cut across boundaries of time, space and sectors and hence can be used as a reference at any given point of time. The reader has given clear, concise and actionable tools framed around relevant and enjoyable cases from his personal work experiences. We would recommend this article to those who believes that their organization is suffering from a culture of indecisiveness as this would help to understand what needs to be practiced to conquer the same.
doc_698943168.docx
The document does the an depth review of HBR Classic article "Conquering a Culture of Indecision".
Critical Review of HBR Classic Article
“Conquering a Culture of Indecision”
[Year]
Critical Review “CONQUERING A CULTURE OF INDECISION” BY RAM CHARAN
Executive Summary The author, Ram Charan (one of the world’s preeminent counselors to CEOs) has shown through his study how organizations can improve their organizational effectiveness by incorporating a corporate culture of “Decision Dialogues” which aims to eliminate indecision in decision making. The main objective of the article is to discover how business leaders can converse in ways that encourage candor, multiple perspectives, and clarity about who will do what to implement decisions. The article clearly demonstrates with examples the components contributing to decisive dialogues. These conversations consist of a genuine search for answers and the ability to tolerate truth and a range of brainstorming views, as well as offering a course of action for implementing the decision in question. The central theme of the article is how organizations can use social operating mechanisms as a tool to overcome a culture of indecisions. The example of Fred Hassan’s management at Pharmacia is given to show that a culture of indecision can be transformed by keeping the social networks and operating mechanisms open with honest and accurate communication. The article gives clear insights as how a culture of decisive decision culture has contributed to the success of top organizations.
An Insight into the results, strengths & weaknesses The article is based on experiences that the author himself has been in during his career as an adviser to large organizations and their leaders. The author has presented his viewpoints
and strengthened his arguments through examples. The author has included in his article organizations from a wide spectrum such as GE, Pharmacia, Electronic Data Systems. By doing this, the article highlights the fact that this philosophy is not restricted to a particular sector or organization. The article finally concludes that the top management is the key driver in making a culture of decisive decision making, as effective change can be brought about by effective leadership. The author outlines concrete steps that top management should incorporate in the social operating mechanism of decisive corporate culture. The characteristics, which include openness, candor, informality and closure, ensure that there is a setting in place where the dialogue can be converted to action. The article shows the major reasons why majority of the dialogues are merely energy drains. Scenarios like dangling dialogues, information clogs, piecemeal perspectives and free for all do not result in effective decisions. They merely result in loss of time, energy, resources and all finally totaling up to additional costs i.e. money. The author illustrates a point that he repeatedly stresses to his clients, which is structure divides, social operating mechanisms integrate. But at the same time he also clarifies his view that he is not against structure as it is essential to divide tasks and responsibilities without which an organization would not be able to function in the current environment. The point he stresses on is that social operating mechanisms are additional functions that an organization must have in order to direct the various activities within a structure towards a common objective. Ultimately, changing a culture of indecision is a matter of leadership. It’s a matter of asking the relevant questions and this requires all the listening skills, business acumen and operational experience that a corporate leader can summon.
The article is carefully pieced together to offer as much diversity as possible and at the same time to cover important and interesting examples of what needs to be done to conquer a culture of indecisions. It helps to correlate to the understanding that to remain competitive in a dynamic environment, organizations need to have cultures where decisions have to be taken effectively and quickly. By using the example of Pharmacia, the author has clearly explained how social operating mechanisms help in integrating different structures of the organizations and creating cross functional effectiveness. He goes on to show how a major drug discovery was a result of this process. Through the GE example, the article also shows how decisive dialogues and social operating mechanisms can give a new direction and hence a competitive advantage to the organization. We also felt as the examples were personal in nature, it helped the author to put his viewpoints in a more clear and lucid manner. More importantly, we felt that the model and framework of social operating mechanism mentioned is actionable which is what makes it an extremely valuable change agent. It’s extremely hard to give criticism to such enjoyable reading from well-known and brilliant management thinkers. The only point we think that could have also been highlighted would be if the article had also related to how these changes in culture have led to organizations from a mechanistic, centralized structure to more of an organic, decentralized one. This would help to show the advantages of using social operating mechanisms and hence a more decisive decision making culture. The views in the article could have been further reinforced if it had included some illustrations of cases where a culture of indecisive decision making had lead to failures in organizations.
Our Views
The views mentioned in the article are very much relevant in the Indian context as well. For example, decision making in IT (which forms a large part of the Indian economy), is pretty messy. By definition, integration and standardization are at odds with quick, customized delivery. As a result, in most organizations the interests of the enterprise take a backseat to the more immediate need to improve business alignment and partnership. Within IT, this conflict is internalized, and conference rooms and offices are filled with well-intentioned applications, architecture and infrastructure professionals questioning each other's motives. In the heat of the battle, there's little that can be done other than ensure that the meetings are productive and the right decisions are made. This article clearly suggests steps which organizations can use to cultivate a culture of decisive decision making. Another example from the Indian context which shows how important Indian organization considers social operating mechanisms is that of Intel India. Intel India strongly follow the philosophy – “In the coming years, Gen Y (Generation Y workers) will be the largest constituency in an organization. Not having our social operating mechanisms catering to their sensibilities and values will mean inability on the part of companies to win the most critical resources--people.” This clearly shows the importance they give to their maintaining a proper social operating mechanism. On a similar line of thought, Sridhar Jayanthi (VP of Engineering – India Operations, McAfee Engineering centre) also writes in his article “Follow through and Closure” on the importance that companies and management need to give to understand the principles of follow through and closure in order to make efficient and quick decisions. He provides suggestions as to what employees and management can do to help to eradicate a culture of indecisive decision making. These examples show how Ram Charan’s viewpoints are being appreciated in the Indian context.
The viewpoints and methodologies mentioned in the article cut across boundaries of time, space and sectors and hence can be used as a reference at any given point of time. The reader has given clear, concise and actionable tools framed around relevant and enjoyable cases from his personal work experiences. We would recommend this article to those who believes that their organization is suffering from a culture of indecisiveness as this would help to understand what needs to be practiced to conquer the same.
doc_698943168.docx