Management consultants call it “The Infinite Loop”. When you don’t want to take a decision on something, there is no need to sweat. Just put it in the infinite loop by keeping the issue on the agenda for as long as possible by discussing it endlessly. The moment someone is close to finding a way out of the stalemate, end the meeting abruptly or say everyone needs time to discuss the pros and cons. You can be rest assured that some new issues will come up and put the original issue back in the infinite loop.
Another way of creating an environment in which nobody takes a decision is to make your employees believe that their happiness and job security are on the line whenever they make a mistake. Apart from being reluctant to take any decisions, they would like to please you by asking your advice on every decision.
Going by the stories emanating from corporate corridors, Indian managers appear to have mastered the art of how not to take a decision. Former Chief Vigilance Commissioner N Vittal was fond of recounting this story: There was a rat that was being harassed by a cat. It went to the owl, the wise bird, to get an idea about how to tackle the cat problem. The owl thought for a while and ponderously told the rat: “To tackle the cat problem, you must also become a cat. You are suffering today because you are weak and the cat is strong.”
The solution sounded right. So the rat went back to the owl the next day and asked how it could become a cat. The owl replied: “Look, implementation is your problem. So, you fix a meeting with the cat to find a way out.”
Needless to say, the rat got the message and never went back to the owl for any further decisions.
A headhunter recounts his experience with a CEO who didn’t want to take a decision on recruiting a vice-president. “He just wanted to sit on the fence. Whenever a candidate was shortlisted after multiple interviews, he would either want to see two more candidates in the previous list or make too many reference calls,” the headhunter says. A year on, the post is still vacant.
Many managers have developed a need for more information, advice or resources that they know they will never get. That’s a sure-fire way of putting to bed undecided issues.
In his delightful book – In the wonderland of Indian managers – Sharu Rangnekar has shown how “effective” managers have perfected this art. An effective manager will not be sitting back simply delaying decisions. He will be on his feet where decisions are asked for and will avoid them. He will keep initiative in his hands and will not allow “decision-by-default”.
Even where it is impossible to avoid decisions and the only alternative is to delay it, the active manager is clearly distinguished from the passive one. The passive manager will delay by being too busy, going on leave, putting the problem at the bottom of the pending pile, going on tour and if all these fail, fall sick. In contrast, the active, decision-avoiding manager will counsel a deliberate delay.
Rangnekar gives an example of this active decision-avoiding approach. On a decision regarding a cycle-stand for workers, the “active” manager notes: “The industrial situation is in a melting pot. It is essential to allow time to stabilise the situation. Besides, the macro-situation has to be clarified, so I suggest that the cycle-stand proposal be delayed indefinitely”.
The most popular method of passing the buck (“if you can get somebody else to avoid the decision, don’t avoid it yourself”) is to appoint a committee to review the problem. But that itself may not be enough.
So here are a few tips: make the committee as large as possible because the possibility of avoiding a decision increases in proportion to the square of the numbers of members in the committee; or make the committee incompatible — at least two of the members should have a previous record of proved hostility.
The other way of ensuring that the committee fails to arrive at a decision is to appoint somebody who has the exceptional quality of inaction. He is thus invaluable to his managers because he cannot or will not complete any job assigned to him and is thus very convenient for avoiding decisions.
If none of this works out, recommend a survey (a sure way of creating confusion and delay) or appoint a consultant whose terms of reference are ambiguous, enough so that his report creates confusion and hostility. The original problem is sure to get lost in the process.
If all these sound familiar, thank Rangnekar for his fascinating insights.
