The art of decision-making

“Decisions are always made in committees with an odd number of people, and three people is already too many,” Marshal Foch once said about decision-making.  On the same subject, General de Gaulle declared, “I have heard your points of view. They do not match mine. The decision is therefore unanimous.”  Besides the wit in these quotes, the leadership qualities of these authors are beyond question, demonstrating an essential point about decision-making. The decision is the privilege of one person only—the leader—the person who takes it.  For an exceptional individual like de Gaulle that means even withdrawing from the situation completely, where necessary. This he did, as everybody knows.

However, this does not imply that the process leading up to the decision is a solitary exercise. A leader also needs other people to listen, to learn from, to stimulate reflection, challenge their choices, focus their team, to get them to understand their vision, and ultimately to convince them.

Making a decision is therefore initially a collective process of refinement that is based on well-established principles. Let’s consider two questions: what are decisions based on and how can we maximize the chances of making the “right” decision?  These are fundamental questions that every leader must reflect on sooner or later, and the answers to which will define their approach to leadership.

What to decide?

The leader decides whatever lies within their jurisdiction. This statement of the obvious leads to a dysfunctional abyss when it is ignored. We have all experienced, at some point, leaders who want to decide everything, and end up destroying the very autonomy that they had ostensibly granted.

This is the difference between strategy and tactics, the first being the framework within which the second can develop.  In other words, the strategy defines the vision and the key steps to achieving it. It is a leader’s prerogative to determine the strategy. The tactics are linked to the operational activities.  They are often placed “in the hands” of more junior players, provided that they have properly understood the leader’s aims, which means understanding their vision.

These immutable principles have been illustrated through the centuries on the battlefield.  Would Napoleon have won his battles if he had given the tactical initiative to his generals?  On 22 November 1944, the orders given by General Leclerc were “take Strasbourg, and if possible Kehl on the other side of the Rhine, while continuing to monitor the Saverne gap and keep an eye on the south for the enemy’s reaction.”  Three lines and that’s it! The initiative and enthusiasm of his group commanders would do the rest. It sounds simple, but in reality “Victorious warriors win first and then go to war, while defeated warriors go to war first and then seek to win” (Sun Tzu, The Art of War). This tells us everything. Indeed, it was in preparing for his decision that Leclerc had already partially won. It was the autonomy given to his subordinates, and their commitment, that led to them achieving their goals, but it was the prior process of analysis and reflection that enabled it to happen. This brings us to our second question.

How do you maximize your chances of making the right decision?

A good decision is always declared to be “good” after the fact, as it is usually the consequences of the decision that allow it to be defined as good or bad. However, we can’t predict the future. Nevertheless, we can reduce the amount of uncertainty through a dynamic analysis of the relevant factors leading to the identification of “possible futures” that will shape the development of the strategy, or “prospective” strategy, as it is usually known.

Preparing for the decision is, therefore, to look ahead as if trying to dispel “the fog of war”. This cannot be improvised. On the contrary, it is a rigorous and collective process that consists of analyzing all the data that could have an effect on the achievement of the objectives (such as environment, background, and actors) and trying to determine the relative influence of “the course of events.” Many methods of reasoning and specific decision-making tools (strategy games, serious games, simulations, etc.) have been developed for managers to use. All have their strengths and weaknesses. Nonetheless, they can all bring to the fore intelligence in the Anglo-Saxon sense of the term, that is to say the ability to make sense of the raw data in order to identify the outlines and trends: cultural, demographic and societal changes, the state of the marketplace, mapping the competition, technological breakthroughs etc. As many different spheres as possible should feed into the analysis (whether it is a SWOT type or something else) carried out by an industry leader’s staff when preparing for a strategic decision.

They must also have a team capable of continuously driving the required pre-decisional activity. What would the genius of Napoleon have been without the extraordinary ability of his Chief of Staff, Berthier, to anticipate, plan and translate into orders and battle plans the Emperor’s dazzling intuitions? History attributes the defeat at Waterloo to the fact that Grouchy was late, but how many people know that, at his last battle, Napoleon was deprived of Berthier’s support?  Knowing whom to surround yourself with and how to manage talent is a necessity for a leader who knows that they cannot deliver everything themselves, or know everything in a world that is ever more complex and evolving.

But does that mean that Berthier could have conquered Europe without Napoleon? Clearly not; we cannot restrict the meaning of “decision” to analysis and planning processes.  Deciding becomes an art when the techniques of decision-making are held by an individual able to harness the full potential of all different types of people.  “Although the painter framing his scene must absolutely know the laws of perspective and abide by them, the very act of observing them draws, in part, on feelings” (Karl Robert – Practical treatise on oil painting – 1891). In management circles today, what Robert describes as “feelings” might be called intuition, discernment, the ability to judge well, flair, an aptitude for seizing opportunities, decisiveness, etc. Equally, qualities and skills are formed over time through education, wider culture (the officers’ academy, according to de Gaulle in his book “Le fil de l’épée” [“the edge of the sword”]), experience, lessons learned through failures, etc. These should be rooted and cultivated in the fertile ground of the “character” of the decision-maker themselves and in their convictions.

It is when we achieve this symbiosis between mastery of rational arguments and “soft skills” that we begin to practice the art of decision-making.

The art of decision-making

In the end, what can we take from all of this? Taking strategic decisions wisely is not just for the rare few, people like Steve Jobs, a figure who would be cited today in the economic arena.  Let’s look at the problem the other way round. Taking a decision is one of the strongest management acts. It is often through the prism of a decision that we judge the management style of a decision maker, even to the extent that avoiding decisions can be a management system in itself.

Learning how to manage, then improving your management skills throughout your personal and professional life; strengthening your leadership skills, gaining experience by seeking out particular situations, learning from mistakes, benchmarking successes, relying on competent teams; and all while drawing on the best of your know-how and your relationship with others, and always seeking to deepen your “knowledge of the world”; is this not the surest route to the holy grail of good decision-making? For all of these, the methods, tools, and personal and group development plans do exist. Short of making you the next Steve Jobs, they may actually help you to avoid the pitfalls of making the “wrong decision.”