KNOWING WHEN AND HOW TO STOP
© 1998 John Perkins
Introduction
Excitation or inhibition, the fundamental states of our nervous
system's
cells (Pavlov, 1966: 354), also describes in a gross binary way
decisions
we face singly, in pairs, in groups, as a nation, and as a species.
Poetically,
Hamlet ponders his fate in his "to be or not to be" solloquy;
more prosaically we do the same: does the team stay in town, or leave?
Do
I stay in this relationship for the indefinite future, or do I get out
now?
Scholars who study decision making like to present the process as one
of
stages (Poole & Hirokawa, 1986; Janis and Mann, 1977). Each stage
typically
has some tasks which need to be completed before the decision making
group
moves to the next stage. After leaving a stage, people will not return
to
it as a matter of routine, but will make incremental adjustments to
their
original decision as experience accrues (Janis and Mann, 1977: 75).
Experience
and research confirm that decisions must be made in an imperfect world;
that is, the decider(s) will not have all of the information, nor will
he
or she be able to perfectly predict the behavior of others; sometimes
the
decider(s) cannot even predict their own behavior (Staw, 1989; Of
Auctions,
1989).
Knowing when, and how to, stop has been the shadow side of decision
making.
I personally began to understand this during my time as an anti-war
activist
in the 1980's. As I watched government policy as described publicly in
the
media, I understood that the governments which had nuclear weapons had
no
serious criteria-and thus no intentions-of stopping.
I remember a fellow activist and I discussing this point. She commented
that when she attended public discussions on nuclear power plants, she
always
would ask what the utility's plans were if they had to close the plant.
They had started something, without thinking through what they would do
if they had to end it. They never had a plan, and seem confused by the
question.
The third source of my reflections on stopping come from when I worked
with
elementary students in the South Bronx on issues of decision making and
self-esteem. For one of our exercises, I would ask them to describe
"something
you used to say 'yes' to that you now say 'no' to, and something you
used
to say 'no' to that you now say 'yes' to." We would role-play the
switch
and have fun with people resisting being persuaded.
I turned to the serious problem of their upcoming adolescence. By a
show
of hands, all of them felt confident they would not take illegal drugs.
But the reality was that many of them would. A one time experiment
might,
or might not, be anything to get too upset about. "But," I asked,
"do you have what it takes to say 'yes' once, then 'no' for the rest
of your life? It's not the first time that makes you an addict-it's the
fifth, the thirteenth, the sixty-fifth time. And remember, when you try
it, it might give you an experience of sights, sounds, colors, and
moods,
you've never had before, and could never have without the use of
illegal
drugs. Can you then say 'no' to that drug?" I reminded them that the
next six to eight years of their lives would probably be the hardest,
and
the decisions they made as fifth and sixth graders about what they
would
do, or not do, would affect those years, and the rest of their lives. I
said once they reached junior high school, life and choices would come
at
them fast and furiously. I ended by telling them we live in a culture
which
is great in encouraging them to start things, but nearly silent about
how
to stop or prevent things.
With these personal experiences alerting me, I included this study as a
unit in my program, focusing at the organizational level. Knowing how
and
when to stop has basically two discontinuous moments of truth: deciding
to stop before going public and deciding to stop once the decision is
public.
Closing what Meyer and Zucker (1989) call permanently failing
organizations-deciding
to end projects or institutions which once had experienced
success-become
cases of public decision making.
In the case of decisions which some the deciders themselves will later
view
as patent folly, the best policy appears to stop early and privately.
But
deciders make decisions with incomplete information and only guesses to
how others might behave. Section One, Folly on the March, will take up
this
problem in greater detail.
Publicity about a decision, or publicly implementing one, widens the
number
of participants and observers, and thus the difficulty of stopping
increases
substantially. The decision becomes rigid and resistant to changes
(Schulman,
1980: 43). This is because stopping "in the middle" or "before
the end" has added difficulties of how to manage one's own "face"
or public reputation (Bohannon, 1993; Ting-Toomey, 1994); how to
persuade
involved others that stopping what you once supported makes more sense
now;
and how to deal with incurred psychological, symbolic, material, and
social
costs. This complex area of decision making will be considered in
Section
Two: In Too Far to Quit?
In the last section of the paper, Can Folly be Prevented?, I will
propose
some tentative recommendations and reflect on my experience of
researching
this paper.
Section One: Folly on the March
When Barbara Tuchman looked at the March of Folly (1984)
through
history, she established some criteria for what she would consider
folly.
Her three criteria can help distinguish between foolishness and an
honest
mistake. To fit her definition of folly, a course of action:
(1) must have been perceived as counter-productive in its
own
time, not by hindsight;
(2) a feasible alternative course of action must have been available;
and
(3) the policy in question must be that of a group, not of individual
ruler,
and should persist beyond any one political lifetime (p. 5).
Taking up Tuchman's third criteria, in 1972, Irving Janis described
many
of the difficulties posed for the "group" in his ground-breaking
book, Groupthink. The groupthink hypothesis asserts that "the existence
of certain antecedent conditions within groups of decision makers
result
in defective decision-making processes, which in turn are linked to
poor
policy outcomes" (Schafer and Crichlow, 1996: 415). Schafer and
Crichlow
in their quantitative review of this theory, simplified Janis's
groupthink
model to three stages as shown in this figure.
From an exhaustive review of Janis's works, Schafer and Crichlow
developed
a refined list of operational definitions for ten antecedent
conditions:
1. Group insulation: Decision makers isolate
themselves
from others not in the immediate decision making circle.
2. Lack of tradition of impartial leadership: The president has
not
had a history of conducting impartial decision-making processes, which
thereby
limits open discussion of a wide range of alternatives.
3. Lack of tradition of methodical procedures: The president
has
not established a tradition of using methodical procedures in the
decision-making
process in terms of information search, routine and systematic
decision-making
meetings, and analysis of pros and cons.
4. Group homogeneity: A lack of disparity exists in the social
background
and ideology of the members of the decision-making group.
5. Perceived short time constraint: The group suffers under
perceived
temporal limits that affect its ability to consider policy options
fully.
6. Low self-esteem caused by recent failure: Recent political
or
military defeat weights on the minds of members of the decision-making
group
and affects current decisions.
7. High personal stress: The crisis being dealt with causes
great
anxiety because of either the stakes involved and the perceived chances
of success or unpleasant policy options.
8. Overestimation of the group: The group operates under an
illusion
of invulnerability or a belief in its inherent morality.
9. Closed-mindedness: The group relies on collective
rationalizations,
stereotypes of the out-group, or guiding metaphors or analogies.
10. Pressure towards uniformity: One or more of the following
exists:
self-censorship, an illusion of unanimity, direct pressure on
dissenters,
self-appointed mind guards (pp. 418-419).
Schafer and Crichlow investigated the same 19 Cold War crises that
Janis
had used to test the groupthink hypothesis in 1987 (Hekek, et al). They
used bivariate analysis to correlate each of the ten conditions with
the
level of information processing errors. Four of the ten antecedent
conditions
proved statistically significant and in the predicted direction: lack
of
tradition of impartial leadership, lack of tradition of methodical
procedures,
overestimation of the group, and closed-mindedness. A fifth condition,
pressures
towards uniformity, came very close to significance and accounted for
fifteen
percent of the variance on its own and was in the expected direction as
well (p. 423). When lumped together, Schafer and Crichlow found that
these
five variables showed almost a one to one correlation between faulty
structural
environments and the number of information-processing errors (p. 425).
None of the three situational variables-short time constraint, high
personal
stress, and recent failure-proved significant. In fact, short time
constraint
and high personal stress seemed to reduce information processing
errors.
In other words, some contextual conditions result in more vigilant
decision
making.
An Example of Groupwisdom
Interestingly, two of the four significant antecedents to groupthink
contain
the phrase "lack of tradition." The American Heritage dictionary
defines tradition as
1. The passing down of elements of a culture from
generation
to generation, especially by oral communication.
2.a. A mode of thought or behavior followed by a people
continuously
from generation to generation; a custom or usage. b. A set of
such
customs and usages viewed as a coherent body of precedents influencing
the
present.
Which teases out this idea: not only must the group learn to remain
humble
(to overcome overestimation) and learn to tolerate ambiguity (to
overcome
close-mindedness), it must continuously examine and deepen its own
culture
of decision making, authority, membership, argument, etc. In other
words,
in groupthink mode the group lacks a tradition of inquiry into its own
modes
of behaving in normal and stressful situations.
Campbell and Nash in A Sense of Mission (1992) describe how some
improper
payments by one of its overseas operations prompted Johnson &
Johnson's
president James Burke to launch a series of Credo Challenge Meetings.
Collins
and Porras (1994) also cite Johnson & Johnson as one of their
"visionary
companies" because of the impact these meetings had on the decision
making processes in the company.
In 1975, Johnson & Johnson had annual sales of about $12 billion
and
had developed a management culture resistant to centralization
(Campbell
and Nash: 138). General Robert Wood Johnson published The Johnson &
Johnson Credo in 1945 for the enlightenment of other business people.
The
entire document fits easily on a single page. It lists four valued
relationships,
each given a full paragraph which defines the relationship and
establishes
Johnson & Johnson's expected obligations to that relationship. The
table
on the next page summarizes the 1975 revised Credo.
After much debate, including reservations from the chairman and CEO who
that felt the Credo should be above "challenge," President Burke
decided to hold company-wide discussions about the value of the Credo
in
1975. The Credo was then thirty years old. With the Credo Challenge
Meetings
Burke began a "long-range program to challenge every manager to make
an informed commitment to the Credo's way of doing business" (p. 143).
In other words, he began what might turn into a new tradition. Indeed,
Credo
Challenge Meetings are still held for new managers (p. 146).
Since 1975, over 1200 managers have participated in Credo Challenge
Meetings,
gathering for two days in groups of 25. These meetings made a point of
always
discussing how the Credo should be implemented in the management of the
Johnson & Johnson company. Interestingly, during these discussions,
Burke's boss, the chairman/CEO, sometimes had to excuse himself because
he "breathed too heavily on the process" (p. 145). In the language
of antecedent conditions to groupthink, he could not maintain
leadership
impartiality.
Burke called the results, "A turn on. A genuine happening" (p.
145). He learned that managers felt that balancing all of their
responsibilities
required discussion because of the difficulty of the task, and most
managers
felt intense commitment to preserving the Credo. Another result of
these
Credo Challenge Meetings is that managers facing a decision pause to
reflect
upon what the Credo would say to do, and discussions based on the Credo
have become habitual (p. 148). In essence, they added a step which
precedes
Janis's antecedents of decision making: continually discuss
organizational
values and seek personal commitments to them. Schafer and Crichlow's
diagram
can be modified to show how Groupwisdom might operate:
| Table 1. Elements in Johnson
& Johnson's 1975 Revised Credo |
| Customers: doctors, nurses, patients,
etc. |
We must strive to reduce our costs in order to maintain
reasonable
prices. Customers' orders must be serviced promptly and accurately. |
| Suppliers
|
Must have an opportunity to make a fair profit. |
| Employees |
We must respect their dignity and recognize their merit. They
must have
a sense of security in their jobs. Compensation must be fair and
adequate,
and working conditions clean, orderly, and safe. Employees must feel
free
to make suggestions and complaints. We must provide competent
management
and their actions must be just and ethical. |
| Communities where people
live and work |
We must be good citizens-support good works and charities
and bear our fair share of taxes. We must maintain in good order the
property
we are privileged to use, protecting the environment and natural
resources.
|
| Stockholders |
Business must make a sound profit. We must experiment
with new ideas. Research must be carried on, innovative programs
developed
and mistakes paid forWhen we operate according to these principles, the
stockholders should realize a fair return.
(adapted from Campbell and Nash, p. 141). |
Why discuss this in a paper about failures of group decision making?
Because
only studying failures may not point to where success lies. The Credo
discussions
prepared Johnson & Johnson to succeed dramatically in making
value-based
decisions under great time pressure and uninvited public scrutiny.
In 1982, Johnson & Johnson's Tylenol brand pain-killer held 37
percent
of the domestic market. It led the market. Ironically, it had been
launched
the same year that the Credo Challenge Meetings began. On September 30,
1982, seven people died in Chicago from taking cyanide-tainted Tylenol.
Shortly after the news reached Johnson & Johnson, they recalled
93,000
bottles and sent almost half a million messages to doctors, hospitals,
and
retailers warning them about the tainted capsules. Within a week they
would
recall or replace 22 million capsules. On the day after the poisonings,
Johnson & Johnson canceled all advertising for the brand, except
for
one ad asking for the public's continued trust in Johnson & Johnson
(pp. 151-152).
They set up a toll-free number-staffed by employees volunteering their
time-for
customers to get a refund without submitting proof of purchase. One
weekend
the toll-free number handled over a million calls, but many of those
were
good wishes from the public.
Everyone, the media, government, and employees, watched how Johnson
&
Johnson would respond. At its conclusion, one employee said:
Tylenol was the tangible proof of what they said at the
Credo
Challenge Meetings. You came away saying, "My God! You're right: we
really do believe this. It's for real. And we did the right thing."
Actually, the whole organization had spent seven years preparing itself
to act principally. It prepared itself to respond quickly and
congruently
to bad news.2 With their masterful handling of the crisis, Johnson
&
Johnson returned Tylenol to the shelves with tamper-resistant
packaging.
Backed by a massive marketing effort, the brand regained 95 percent of
it
previous market share and once again led the field (p. 154).
Responding in a crisis situation defines just one type of
decision-making
a group is likely to face. Far more difficult to gauge and respond
successfully
to are situations where the problem takes a long time to become
salient.
I turn to those types of situations next.
Section Two: In too far to Quit?
Great is the art of beginning,
but greater is the art of ending.
-Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Anyone attempting to stop something once it becomes public faces a
frustrating
task. By public I mean the tangible proofs of a decision, whether begun
or just proposed. This includes: major projects such as the closing of
factories,
missions to land a person on the moon, even setting a date for a
wedding.
Decision making under public scrutiny has been described by different
authors
as escalating situations, permanently failing situations, and
large-scale
policy making. In escalating situations efforts to recoup losses simply
increase the losses (Staw and Ross, 1989). In permanently failing
organizations
(Meyer and Zucker, 1989) what one group perceives as failure other
groups
interpret as acceptable, or even as successful. According to Schulman
(1980),
large-scale situations, whether successful or failing, create
institutional
and personal commitments which resist being changed.
Escalating Situations
Escalating situations often turn on the very first commitment to a
course
of action. In other words, once "go" gets the nod, decision makers
don't look back. Note the care General George C. Marshall, as Secretary
of State, took in 1948 to point out to Congress how difficult it would
be
to extricate the country from a military commitment to back the Chinese
Nationalists: It would involve this government in a continuing
commitment
from which it would practically be impossible to withdraw" (Neustadt
and May, 1986: 248-249).
Unfortunately, "who lost China" became the shibboleth of the fifties,
which may have prevented the bureaucracy from clearly pointing out the
hazards
of escalating in Vietnam. Still, George Ball did attempt to warn
President
Johnson of the dangers of escalating in Vietnam:
The decision you face now is crucial. Once large numbers of
U.S. troops are committed to direct combat, they will begin to take
heavy
casualties in a war they are ill-equipped to fight in a noncooperative
if
not downright hostile countryside. Once we suffer large casualties, we
will
have started a well-nigh irreversible process. Our involvement will be
so
great that we cannot-without national humiliation-stop short of
achieving
our complete objectives. Of the two possibilities I think humiliation
will
be more likely than the achievement of our objectives-even after we
have
paid terrible costs (quoted by Staw and Ross: 1989: 216, quoting from
The
Pentagon Papers).
Staw and Ross's (1989) article "Understanding Behavior in Escalating
Situations" begins with this quote from Ball. They describe "escalating
situations" as "situations in which losses have resulted from
an original course of action, but where there is the possibility of
turning
the situation around by investing further time, money, and or effort."
In our daily living we face making decisions in escalating contexts,
too:
what to do with a stalled career, falling investments, or a faltering
relationship
(Staw and Ross, 1989: 216).
Some insights into escalating situations might come from looking at
gambling.
Though a gambler might play dozens of spins of the wheel at the
roulette
table in an evening, after the initial decision to play at all,
subsequent
bets are not genuine decisions, merely a continuation of that first
commitment.
Dostoevsky described this moment before the plunge in The Gambler:
I confess that my heart was pounding in my breast and that
I
didn't feel at all cool and detached; probably I had felt for a long
time
already that I would leave Roulettenberg a different man and that
something
was about to happen which would radically and irrevocably change my
life.
I felt that it was bound to happen (in Leonard, 1989: 39).
One can see in another Dostoevsky passage what Janis called
overestimation:
I believe I had something like four thousand gulden in my
hands
within five minutes. That's when I should have quit. But a funny
feeling
came over me, some sort of desire to challenge Fate, an uncontrollable
urge
to stick my tongue out at it, to give it a flip on the nose (p. 38).
Note the "funny feeling" Dostoevsky's gambler gets. Here literature
points to a facet of escalation some research misses: there exists
something
in the emotion-action-results process of persistent gambling which
feeds
a hunger beyond material success or failure. The gambler, confronted
with
losing at the wheel, dice, horses, cards, etc. confronts reality's
mismatch
to their intense feelings of confidence. He or she attempts to regain
both
the confident feeling of precognition and external success by
increasing
his or her betting. The gambler continues until all is lost.
From a review of research in the laboratory and the "real world,"
Staw and Ross have uncovered four classes of determinants-project,
psychological,
social and organizational-for this persistence in losing situations
(1989:
216). Each of these determinants possesses, naturally, both rational
and
meta-rational dimensions. Though the research into these determinants
has
been uneven, the existence of multiple determinants of commitment and
persistence
leads Staw and Ross to view escalation as multidetermined. Persistent
pursuit
of a failing course may most likely happen in situations characterized
by
a series of seemingly insufficient small-impact variables, as say, the
loss
of a few dollars on a particular bet out of a original stake of several
hundred dollars. They add, "A slow and irregular decline may not only
make a line of behavior difficult to extinguish (in the reinforcement
theory
sense), but may allow the forces for persistence to grow over time"
(p. 219).
"Slow and irregular decline" can also be named permanent failure.
In their book on Permanently Failing Organizations, Meyer and Zucker
(1989)
researched the literature on low performing organizations and presented
four case studies:
The decline of the Los Angeles Herald Examiner, the only paper actually
founded by William Randolph Hearst, and once the flagship of the Hearst
publishing empire-endured a nine year strike from 1967 to 1976 and the
family
remains divided on whether to sell the paper or to attempt a comeback;
A worker-owned meat packing company where workers picketed their own
company-it
declined for 15 years under various organizational schemes before going
bankrupt;
The attempt of the Los Angeles Archdiocese to sell off an
under-enrolled
Catholic boys' high school without anticipating the reactions of the
staff
or the Latino alumni, ninety percent of whom had gone on to college and
successful careers-the Archdiocese reversed its decision after eighteen
months of controversy and in the face of a well coordinated "Save
Cathedral
High" campaign; and
The divergent motivations of steel mill owners when contrasted with
those
of their employees and the communities in which the mills
operated-workers
and communities established new quasi-governmental institutions which
could
take over mills by exercising powers of eminent domain with the stated
purpose
of protecting the jobs, and communities, dependent on the mills (pp.
31-40).
These cases share some characteristics identified by Meyer and Zucker:
"anticipated
future benefits, multiple goals, and decline" (p.80). Anticipated
future
benefits mean that some people involved believe that continuing the
organization,
even in the face of disappointing performance or long-term decline, may
still bring benefits in the future. Competing groups contest how to
frame
the benefits (and decline) and to whom the benefits accrue, which leads
to multiple goals. In the case of the closing steel mills, for example,
stockholders would view closing uncompetitive mills as a sound business
decision while communities viewed the same news as "bombshells"
(p. 40). Naturally, given the divergent ways in which parties measure
success,
whether or not an organization is even "failing" and in a state
of decline becomes a matter of opinion. For example, in the case of the
high school, measured financially it had ceased to pay its way, but
measured
educationally it continued to be an outstanding success story. Who gets
to name the measures of performance?
To the three common qualities identified by Meyer and Zucker, I humbly
submit
three more. First, none had an explicit and public process for closing
down
operations. In the incorporation papers for organizations the initial
founders
must describe what they will do in the case the organization has to
dissolve.
When an organization is one week old, this can be answered with a
phrase;
when it is several decades old, more is needed.
Second, three of the four cases had a wide range of people who
advocated
for a right to participate in the decision, even though they were not
"owners."
These people often recruited other people of wider social or political
influence
to the cause of keeping the organization operating. Meyer and Zucker
called
these secondary interests "dependent actors" (p. 24) and offered
this description of this role:
Workers, who receive solely wage or salary compensation;
the
community, which receives only the side benefits of firm operation in
the
form of employment, purchasing power, and access to goods and services
provided
by the firm; and the organizations using the firm's products as inputs,
requiring the firm's services, or selling their products to the firm,
are
in a position of dependency and therefore have the motivation to
support
the maintenance of the firm apart from its efficiency and resulting
performance.
This motivation is relatively constant, hence it weakens the relation
of
performance to persistence (p. 93-94).
Third, the people initially identifying the organization as being in
decline
failed to understand the emotional-symbolic connections others had with
the organization. Organizations take on significant symbolic meaning
for
people whose lives they have previously touched, as well as for current
dependent actors, as can be seen in the Herald Examiner and Catholic
high
school cases. Failing to understand this connection leaves those
seeking
to suspend operations baffled by the emotion and energy people put into
keeping the organization "alive." They also misstep significantly
right at the beginning of their effort to close by not informing
dependent
actors well enough in advance and by not making sure people can find a
way
to ritualistically say good-bye to-while somehow remaining emotionally
in
touch with-their "symbol" (Bridges, 1991: 31). They unwittingly
step in to the quagmire of changing behaviors and expectations about
large-scale
operations, which I will turn to next.
Large-Scale Decisions
The political scientist Paul Schulman makes a case in Large-Scale
Policy
Making (1980) that large-scale projects need special handling, almost a
new way of being conceptualized. The way forward, or back, may not be
smooth
and continuous. He notes that
large-scale policy pursuits are beset by organizational
thresholds
or "critical mass" points closely associated with both their initiation
and subsequent developmentThe large-scale policy objective typically
confronts
psychological, technological, organizational, and administrative
barriers
over which it must "leap" discontinuously if it is to establish
and sustain itself (p.28).
And I will add that these discontinuous leaps reappear when a
large-scale
project needs to reverse itself and shut down operations. Essentially,
large-scale
projects generate formal and informal agreements among lots of people,
who
then participate in doing the work of the project. The Nobel Laureate
economist
Kenneth Arrow has neatly summarized the dilemma:
The problem is that agreements are typically harder to
change
than individual decisions. When you have committed not only yourself
but
many others to an enterprise, the difficulty of changing becomes
considerable.
If it is done on a conscious level, we have all the formalities
involved
in persuading others to change their minds. What may be hardest of all
to
change are unconscious agreements, agreements whose very purpose is
lost
in our minds (1974: 28).
The discontinuities exist externally as well as within individual
decision
makers-and within involved decision making groups. A change, even a
small
one, begins to feel to the decision maker, and well may be interpreted
by
others, as a personal error and failure, though he or she or they
decided
and acted in good faith for the benefit of the organization. This
results
in overprotection and rigidity in decision-making processes by those
with
power because even small changes come to mean admissions of error
(Schulman,
p. 50). Paradoxically, persisting in the error, sometimes at enormous
costs,
becomes preferred by people identified with the decision to admitting
to
a mistake in judgment. Persisting in folly, as Barbara Tuchman points
out,
displays a certain lack of courage:
Persistence in error is the problem. there is always the
freedom
of choice to change or desist from a counter-productive course if the
policy-maker
has the moral courage to exercise it. He [or she] is not a fated
creature
blown by the whims of Homeric gods. Yet to recognize error, to cut
losses,
to alter course, is the most repugnant option in government (p. 383).
Section Three: Can Folly be Prevented?
Can folly be prevented? Maybe not, but its incidence might be reduced.
Barbara
Tuchman thinks that individual leaders need better and longer training,
and that the public needs to peer into their character before allowing
them
to assume the reins (puns with reigns) of office (p. 384). What can we
do
while waiting for this enlightened educational policy, and the
enlightened
populace which will nurture it? Plenty, I think. I will call my
recommendations
anticipatory conditions.
The leading anticipatory condition must be the continuous practice of
wide-ranging
discussions of an organization's values and moral beliefs. This keeps
decision
makers conscious of how their actions might support or undermine
reputed
values. Clearly, the example provided by Johnson & Johnson shows
the
value of talking about morals. It is noteworthy that moral issues
raised
by Senator Fulbright and Arthur Schlesinger did not get discussed by
Kennedy's
advisors before the Bay of Pig invasion in 1962 (Janis, 1972: 157).
Anticipatory conditions two through six are the active, positive
rephrasings
of the significant antecedents Schafer and Crichlow identified. These
will
be listed later.
One of the fascinating features of groupthink is how partial the
decision
makers thinking becomes, perhaps as a way to cope with their anxiety by
limiting the scope of what they would think about. Neustadt and May in
Thinking
in Time (1986) have identified this tendency to "ignore whatever seems
not to fit and to define the problem as one calling for solutions they
[politicians]
have ready" (p. 235). Tuchman called this trait wooden-headedness,
and commented that for Philip II of Spain "no experience of the failure
of his policy could shake his belief in its essential excellence"
(Tuchman:
7).
Neustadt and May provided several remedies for this malaise. My
anticipatory
condition number seven is Neustadt and May's suggestion that decision
makers
make time lines of their own organization, of their competitors'
organizations,
and of the current situation. They recommend leaving nothing of note
out,
and weaving into it the details of personal and organizational history
(Neustadt
and May: 238).
To balance this literal mapping of the history of the people and issues
before the group, they suggest making deliberate use of analogies: that
is, making a worksheet which lists possible historical analogies to
what
is perceived as the current challenge, and then note where the analogy
has
likenesses-and also note the differences-to the current problem (p.
273).
A spontaneous example of this from Robert Kennedy avoided a pre-emptive
strike during Cuban Missile Crisis: he called a surprise attack on Cuba
a "Pearl Harbor in reverse" (emphasis added, Janis, 1972: 157).
A ninth anticipatory condition will also be taken from Neustadt and
May:
decision makers need to think through their assumptions about cause and
effect. For example, when deliberating on whether to approve the Bay of
Pigs invasion, Kennedy or his aides, needed only to have written on a
yellow
the completion to this sentence: "For the objective of bringing Castro
down, a landing at the Bay of Pigs is the best option because" Even
if they had sidestepped basic beliefs ("truths"), they would have
encountered key "if-then" presumptions. Those could have been tested-or
discarded-on sight (p. 238). Janis points out, with Arthur Schlesinger,
that some of their assumptions about the military operations might have
been challenged by simply looking at a map of Cuba after the plan was
changed
from a landing at Trinidad to a landing at the Bay of Pigs:
Schlesinger acknowledges that he and the others attending
the
White House meetings simply overlooked the geography of Cuba: "I don't
think we fully realized that the Escambray Mountains lay 80 miles from
the
Bay of Pigs, across a hopeless tangle of swamps and jungle." This
oversight
might have been corrected if someone in the advisory group had taken
the
trouble to look a map of Cuba (1972: 29).
My tenth, and last, anticipatory condition is deciding before acting
how
and when one will want to voluntary stop the activity. This is to be
done
for every option under discussion. In escalating situations, where
tempting
possibilities and disregarded dangers lurk at every turn, a
pre-decision
as to when to stop can prevent great loss (Of Auctions, 1989: Staw,
1989).
Of course, decision makers must always seriously consider doing
nothing.
But action not required now may be required later. This means setting
up
a monitoring system for detecting the needed information. (see Neustadt
and May, p. 238). To summarize my ten anticipatory conditions
recommendations:
1. Host on-going discussions about the moral and ethical
values
of the organization.
2. Create a tradition of impartial leadership.
3. Create a tradition of methodical procedures.
4. Keep the estimation of the group limited and underestimated. Stay
humble.
5. Practice tolerance for ambiguity as the group struggles to make
sense
of all of the available information. Available information includes the
feelings, hunches, and metaphorical reasoning of members of the group.
6. Continually strive to see the situation in new ways in order to
avoid
becoming closed-minded.
7. Make a time line of the history of the group, of any opposing
groups,
and of the situation. Weave in personal details.
8. Make deliberate use of analogies by listing them and how they are
similar-and
different-to the current situation.
9. Probe thinking for cultural, personal, and institutional assumptions
about cause and effect.
10. Discuss for every suggested decision option how the group would
want
to voluntarily stop.
Of course, these are just suggestions. There exists no royal road. As
Neustadt
and May put it after discussing their time-line:
This bring us to the absolute frontier of our
considerations
and experiments up to now. We have no more to offer than a general
attitude,
a cast of mind, an outlook, not a method (p. 237).
Final Words
Despite the positive tone of my recommendations, I could add many more.
This means to me that the question of knowing how and when to stop
remains
an open one. If I can assert certainty about anything I have learned on
this topic, it is that all proposals must be put forward as provisional
and subject to later, or better, periodic review and revisions. Public
discourse
about decisions and large-scale efforts may need to always include
reminders
of the provisionalness of our planning, and specifically point out the
types
of new data or changes in circumstances which would trip a major
reconsideration.
I also have learned that large-scale changes involves the changing of a
lot of minds, so continuous and open dialogue and evaluation of both
the
criteria and data of performance will pay dividends later.
Knowing how and when to stop will be different for every specific
instance.
One map cannot be drawn for how to transverse this territory, for each
instance
has different players, obstacles, histories, and anticipated futures.
Still,
as Kenneth Arrow points out:
There are moments in history when we simply must act, fully
knowing our ignorance of possible consequences, but to retain our full
rationality
we must sustain the burden of action without certitude, we must always
keep
open the possibility of recognizing past errors and changing course (p.
29).
Though I began my researches for this paper with characteristic
enthusiasm,
believing that, at last, I would be able to learn from the mistakes of
others
to distill for myself a few "rules" for knowing when and how to
stop, I leave this project with many more questions and plausible lines
of research.
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NOTES
1 Comparing this version with the 1945 original, shows that a
fifth
category has been deleted: "Our third responsbility is to our
management.
Our executives must be persons of talent, education, experience, and
ability.
They must be persons of common sense and full understanding" (Collins
and Porras, 1994: 58). I have not seen any references to why it was
deleted.
2 Note that without this preparation and deep organizational
understanding
of its ideology, Johnson & Johnson might have reacted as
Bristol-Myers
did to a problem of Excedrin being tampered with in the Denver area:
Bristol-Myers
recalled tablets only in Colorado and did not alert the public.
(Collins
and Porras: 81)