Tough Calls

The global economic turmoil that began in 2008 has taught numerous lessonsthe most important one: When leaders make good decisions, little else matters. When they refuse to make decisions or show a pattern of making bad ones, nothing else matters. Corporate leaders should hear this as a clarion call that awakened us all to the fact that we can no longer afford the short-sighted luxury of considering decision-making a passive, pristine process. Its not. Its messy. Blaming failed mergers and acquisitions on incompatible cultures hastens the formation of the trap. Leaders blame culture, but, in truth, bad judgment and the fear of failure deserve more responsibility. Soon, patterns of bad judgmentthose things that dont work but that people feel loathe to change because weve always done it that wayemerge. The trap takes the form of anti-learning, anti-change, and eventually, anti-success. A paradox has emerged. On one hand, most agree that this trap compromises effective performance. On the other hand, leaders devote almost no focus to preventing, avoiding, or managing the trap. We need new ways of thinking about the environment of the organizationnew ways to describe and understand companiesways that will help us design and implement interventions that reduce or eliminate problems, not perpetuate them. Tough Calls is an attempt to reconcile this paradox and point the way to better leadership and decision-making.