Arvind Singhal: Making decisions!

MARKETMIND

A new topic for discussion in management journals and other publications is, surprisingly, on making decisions. Fortune International recently carried a cover feature on this theme in its 75th anniversary issue.

"Blink" is the title of a new bestseller attempting to analyse how some people consistently make quick and brilliant decisions and others not.

Of course, over decades, many theories and models have been developed to understand and facilitate decision making. However, I guess this new-found interest in this subject is probably because some of the best-trained managers and political leaders have apparently erred in their decisions in recent times.

One of the worst ones in recent times could be the decision of George Bush to invade Iraq. Hundreds of billions of dollars of shareholder wealth was eroded in the last few years by telecom czars when they placed bets on 3-G technologies.

Marks & Spencer, amongst the most successful of all European retailers till some time ago, has seen erosion in revenues for seven consecutive quarters despite having a number of chairmen/senior business leaders.

At the same time, relatively an upstart from India""Mittal Steel""is now in Fortune Global 500 and heads this very illustrious list when measured on performance in terms of returns on assets.

Despite the apparent error committed by Mercedes Benz in launching an outdated model on its debut in India, Ford managers""in their wisdom""did the same with Escort and have since been struggling to be counted as a serious player in the fast-growing market.

Tata Motors, despite many cynics, bet on Indica and built up a serious passenger car business for themselves in just about no time.

Pantaloon's mercurial chairman""Kishore Biyani""has been riding the crest of growth of modern retail through his lightning-fast decision taking that has left his competitors way behind.

As a consultant to some of the largest Indian and multinational businesses, I have the privilege of seeing from close quarters the decision-taking processes adopted by many of them.

I cannot share names at this time for confidentiality reasons, but in the next decade, I am confident we would have some very surprising names on the list of winners and losers.

What should be the right decision-taking strategy in the Indian context? In my view, the most important strategy should be to "actually take decisions".

We should proudly accept the fact that as per the most recent ranking of the top 10 economies of the world, India is at number 10.

While it may take 6-7 years for us to overtake the currently ninth-ranked Canada (at current economic growth rates for both these countries), it still implies that India can finally provide the opportunity to create multi-billion dollar businesses.

For this growing, young, and vibrant consuming class, the issue should no longer be about the sustainability of the opportunity but more about getting to market at the earliest with the appropriate proposition.

Likewise, the decision should no longer be on which opportunity to pursue, especially when faced with a plethora of options.

It should be more on just picking up any one that appeals most and then spending effort and resource on getting started very quickly.

Unfortunately, the track record of many established Indian businesses has not been so good in recent years. The textile and clothing industry is the most poignant example of having missed the post-quota opportunity that was staring at India for the last 10 years.

Construction/infrastructure is another area where by this time, many Indian business houses could have positioned themselves to take advantage of the very large projects that will probably now go to international players.

In retailing, I have gone through the pain of seeing dozens of promising business plans gathering dust in a number of corporate headquarters.

Having decided to take decisions, and take them quickly, the next step is to institute a process for arriving at decisions. While the decision-taking process has to be supported with data, information, and analysis, a line has to be drawn on how much information and analysis would be adequate to take an "informed" decision.

In most cases, it is possible to isolate the most important variables that can have a bearing on success or failure. A process must be put in place to prioritise the variables themselves, and then assigning team(s) to study these variables in a defined time schedule.

Then, decision must be taken to take a decision on the basis of information and analysis available at that point rather than procrastinating by asking for more information.

All decisions cannot turn out to be right, given the heightened uncertainty in the external business environment on account of a myriad factors.

Hence, boards must condone some errors as long as they are satisfied that there was no compromise by the decision taker on the process itself, and that the logic used to arrive at a conclusion was flawless.

HR managers have to start giving more importance to decision-making capabilities of their new recruits, especially at the senior levels.

I am not sure what tools are available to hone such capabilities, but if they do exist, companies must make an effort to put their leadership teams through such programmes.

The next decade, most likely, is to be India's decade. It would be interesting to see who the winners and losers would be!

arvind@ksa-technopak.com