Decision Making and Trends in the
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By Mario deSantis, January 29, 2000 | |
Sometime ago, disgusted about the mismanagement of our public resources by our political | |
common sense must always be one of the criteria to support decisions | leaders and bureaucrats, I felt the need to write few articles on how political or business decisions |
could be made through a participatory process(1) rather than through the personal assets of | |
our leaders: power, greed, dishonesty and mutual manipulation. My reading in this field has | |
been facilitated somewhat by the fact that my son James is taking some university classes in | |
decision making; however, as at this time, I have not written anything in this matter. What is | |
very important in decision making is the use of common sense, that is common sense must | |
always be one of the criteria to support decisions. As we have already seen in prior articles, | |
the use of statistical and mathematical tools as the only means to support decisions is not | |
adequate(2), and I would say that their widespread use is quite dangerous. So, in my reading, | |
I became first enthralled when I came across the book "Introduction to Decision Technology(3)". | |
The authors of this book take a very different approach in laying out what is required by | |
shift the emphasis from the analysis of mathematical models to making students active modelers | management students. I appreciated the novel strategy of direct marketing of the book by |
the authors; and, I also appreciated the fact that the authors shift the emphasis from the | |
analysis of mathematical models to making students active modelers through the use of | |
excellent application software. What I liked most is the authors' common sense approach | |
in dealing with innovation and creativity, starting with the marketing of their book, and finishing | |
with their desire to have feedback from the students and their employers. | |
Last December, I hyperlinked into the site of Jane Cull(4), and I was able to read her excellent | |
we were experiencing still bigger and bigger mega mergers | papers on human behaviour. Since then, I have exchanged few messages with Jane, and at one |
point I expressed my discouragement in realizing that notwithstanding a global movement by | |
artists, writers, academicians, world leaders and politicians, to change our top down hierarchical | |
pyramidal way of thinking(5), we were experiencing still bigger and bigger mega mergers, the | |
last biggest being the intended merger between American On Line and CNN/TimeWarner. | |
However, lately, I have been inspired to see a better vision of business by referring to the work | |
Bill Jensen has rediscovered simplicity as the new competitive advantage | of Dee Hock(6)(7) and Bill Jensen(8). Dee Hock, the creator of VISA, has been working on the |
creation of chaordic organizations, that is self-governing organizations arising from chaos and | |
order just like VISA or the INTERNET. Bill Jensen has rediscovered simplicity as the new | |
competitive advantage and says that simplicity is the "practical approach to competing in a | |
complex world filled with infinite choices." | |
Going back to the Saskatchewan economic environment and to the continuous mismanagement | |
our contingent priority is to unmask the deceptive behaviour of our leaders and bureaucrats | of our resources, I feel that there is the need for better decision making processes. However, |
when you further consider that our policy directions are purposely created to maintain a state of | |
confusion where only the most powerful and rich can survive(9), then our contingent priority is to | |
unmask the deceptive behaviour of our leaders and bureaucrats, and given the opportunity, that is | |
what I intend to do in some future articles. | |
---------------Endnotes: | |
Saskatchewan Bureaucracy: The Need of Better Decision Making Processes, by Mario deSantis, October 27, 1999 | |
The misuse of Statistics as a scientific tool, by Mario deSantis, January 18, 2000 | |
Introduction to Decision Technology, by Liberatore & Nydick, LN Publishing, Villanova, PA, USA. http://www77.homepage.villanova.edu/robert.nydick/dectech/course.html | |
Jane Cull is the founder of Life's Natural Solutions, an educational consultancy supporting human growth and potential. http://www.ozemail.com.au/~jcull/ | |
METADESIGN: PART III-Reflections, by Humberto Maturana. An excerpt "...We live a culture centered in domination and submission, mistrust and control, dishonesty, commerce and greediness, appropriation and mutual manipulation..." http://www.inteco.cl/articulos/metadesign.htm | |
The Trillion-Dollar Vision of Dee Hock, by M. Mitchell Waldrop http://www.fastcompany.com/online/05/deehock.html | |
Birth of the Chaordic Age, by Dee Hock, Published in 1999 by Berrett - Koehler Publishers | |
Simplicity: The New Competitive Advantage in a World of More, Better, Faster, by Bill Jensen. Published in January 2000, by Perseus Books http://www.simplerwork.com/book.htm | |
Our leaders can't recognize an asset from a hole in the ground, by Mario deSantis, December 2, 1999 | |