THINKING THROUGH A MANAGEMENT SITUATION

The basic role of a manager, besides doing the routine work, is decision-making. He
has to analyze problem-solving situations, make decisions, and communicate the
decisions and reasons for arriving at those decisions.

A manager decides in various situations on the basis of

a) information available to him or he can get

b) his ability to analyse and synthesize the Information,
c) his values and attitudes, and
d) his will to act, which Includes deciding on a wise action or prudent inaction.

Therefore, the decision is one that he takes, and the decision and the decision-maker
cannot be separated. The decision is neither right nor wrong. The manager has only
consequences to reckon with. All that he can do at the time of decision-making is to
apply his mind to the situation. How does he do it?

Situational Approach

Explaining the concept of situational approach, Mockler writes:

In doing any job, the manager's first step is to identify the major charac-
teristics of the situation confronting him. If he is lucky, the structure of
the situation will be familiar to him, either from his experience or his
reading, and he will have guidelines at hand for dealing with it. If he is
not lucky, he must develop his own solutions. (1)

Management situations are characterized by their unstructuredness, lack of information,

and uncertainty of the future. However, a manager can equip himself to handle such
situations by learning and improving the process and skills of understanding of situation
and problem-solving.

Understanding 8 Situation

To understand a situation, finding answers to the following questions may be helpful:

What? When? How? Why?

Who(m)? Where? How much/many?

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Prepared by Professor S. Sreenivas Rao, Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad.

1 Robert J Mockler, “Situational Theory of Management,” HBR Vol. 49, No. 3, May-June 1971, p 146.

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These are the basic questions by which human beings and languages try to find the
boundaries or features of an Idea, whether it is a physical object or an abstract thought.
What and Who(m) represent the objects of a situation. When and Where indicate the
time and space dimensions. How and How much (many) tell us the process or system
of a situation. Why gives the clue to the cause-effect relationship in the objects or the
process.

A manager has to ask these questions and get answers. A thorough understanding of a
situation or only a hazy notion of it depends on the thoroughness or superficiality of the
question-answer exercise.

Problem Solving Approach

Having grasped the situation, the manager must move on to solve the problems(s)
arising out of the situation. Here we may find it useful to follow the problem-solving
approach or the scientific method of diagnosis and analysis.

The mental processes used in scientific inquiry--observing, hypothesizing, reasoning,

and concluding-can also be useful in handling unstructured management situations.
Bacon's inductive method as well as Descartes' deductive method can be equally used
to reason through a management situation as much as in a scientific situation.

The following steps of problem solving approach can be used to handle a management
situation:

ProbIem(s)
Criteria
Options
Decision /Recommendation
Action plan
Contingency plan

Problem

Problem marks the beginning and the end. One is reminded of T.S. Eliot's lines “What
we consider the beginning is often the end”. The resolution of the problem is the main
concern. A manager starting with a wrong problem or a wrong hypothesis will end up
solving a problem which does not exist or creating a problem rather than solving a
problem.

In defining the problem, the following elements have to be identified:

a) What the situation is and what it should be

b) What are the symptoms and what are the causes?
c) What is the central issue and what are the subordinate issues?

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 d) What are the decision areas and what needs to be done immediately, in the
short-term, medium term, or long term?
e) Is a comprehensive examination being done or a single track hypothesis or
personal prediction/specialization being pursued?

For analyzing the problem, Kepner and Tregoe recommend sorting out the information
under what, where, when, and extent across what is and what is not, the distinctiveness
in the situation, and changes which may have taken place as follows:

Is Is not Distinctiveness Change

in is
What?

Where?

When?

Extent?

After this analysis, the deduced causes can be compared with the actual ones. (2)

Criteria

In the management jargon words like aim, goal, objective, Intention, purpose, and
criterion are used sometimes synonymously or with different meanings. For the
discussion here, the first five words are treated as synonymous and are recognized at
the problem definition stage itself while identifying what the situation Is and should be.
However, in correcting the situation as it exists now to what it should be, the manager
needs criteria (yardsticks or goal posts) by which he can judge that he is on the right
path or in the right direction. Criteria are all the more Important because they link up the
problem definition with the evaluation of the options.

In constructing the criteria, it may be useful to do a SWOT analysis, i.e., recognize the
strengths and the weaknesses of the decision maker and his organization and the
opportunities available and threats confronting the decision maker and his organization
in a given situation. This analysis will help in judging the objectives to pursue or to avoid
and in evaluating the options.

Furthermore, the manager must satisfy himself and others that

a) The criteria arise out of the problem definition and not independent of it.
.
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2 Charles H. Kepner and Benjamin B. Tregoe, The Rational Manager, New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1965.

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 b) They are concrete, i.e., they are either measurable or observable, as much as
possible.
However, non-quantifiable criteria are not ignored merely because they cannot
be quantified.
c) They are prioritized
d) They encompass a holistic view--economic considerations, personality of the
decision maker, organizational aspects, and societal interests.
e) They do not have loaded dice. Both the pro and con aspects have been
considered.

Options

In building up options, creative, logic, and critical thinking processes have to be

exercised.

Sometimes the options are obvious. But can the manager look beyond the obvious?
Can he create and discover options which are not obvious?

After short listing and ranking them, the options have to be evaluated against the criteria
and possible Implications in implementation. The evaluation process demands the use
of logical and critical thinking.

Decision

The decision or recommendation will follow from the evaluation of the options, provided
the process of thinking has been clear and rigorous so far.

The manager must make sure that the recommendation is an adequate response to the
problem and implementable.

Finally, the manager must recognize consciously the tradeoffs being made in the
criteria, whether he is comfortable with them, and confident of convincing others of the
reasonableness of his decision. If not, the process of reasoning may have gone hay wire
at some stage earlier. He may have to retrace his steps and recheck the process again
and again.

Action

Even the best analysis can go waste if attention is not paid to the action plan. The
manager has to visualize the action steps and their consequences to avoid being
caught unawares. He should decide what to do, when to do what, where to do what,
and how to do what. Even at this stage he has to go through the problem-solving
framework--what problems does he anticipate, what criteria would he like to pursue,
what options would be open to him, and what choices he can make under what
circumstances.

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Contingency

A manager thrives on his optimism and confidence to get things done. Yet, if something
can go wrong, it is likely to go wrong. He should have his parachute ready to bailout.
The contingency plan must emerge from the action plan, and the action plan has to be
watched carefully during its implementation.

Information

The manager is often confronted with the problem of lack of data or information. Not all
that he wants is available. Therefore, he has to constantly ask what is the minimum data
required for the decision, what is available, what he can get and where within the
available time and money, and what he cannot get. Since there are bound to be gaps in
the data and information, the manager has to make assumptions to fill up the gaps and
recognize the basis of his assumptions and whether they are critical to the decision.

Facts, figures, and opinions form the grist to the information mill. They have to be inter -
preted to become evidence for throwing light on the issue under consideration. Facts
and figures do not speak for themselves. Only their interpretations further an opinion or
an argument.

After getting whatever Information he can, the manager has to decide on its accuracy,
validity, and reliability. He must constantly question, find answers, and resolve
discrepancy in the evidence.

The manager may be so involved in wrestling with information and worrying about the
information he cannot get that he may reach the stage of analysis-paralysis and
overlook to separate the wheat from the chaff. The Hamletion stance of “to be, or not to
be” is useful up to a point to toss over an issue in one's mind and to do the iterative
analysis, but beyond a point it will become dysfunctional and the initiative will pass on to
others.

Skills Required

A manager may use the problem-solving approach as a form filling exercise and do a
superficial analysis in a structured form. The real advantages of the problem-solving
approach accrue only when the manager is able to question and re-question himself at
every stage and bring to bear various thought processes to do a depth analysis. Broadly
the three areas which would have to be activated are creative thinking, logical thinking,
and critical thinking.

Creative thinking relates to the ability to see relationships and think beyond the narrow
boundaries superficially perceived. In logical thinking, the ability to build hypothesis and
detect fallacies in relationships would appear. In critical thinking, the ability to ask
questions and make judgments is emphasized.

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More specifically, the elements of thinking process which come into play in the problem
solving approach are as follows:

Analyzing Sequencing

Classifying Seeing relationships

Breaking-up Synthesizing

Situational Thinking Rather Than Technical Thinking

Concepts, tools, techniques, and skills taught in different courses in management are
necessary and useful to understand a situation and evaluate the options. But tools and
techniques are in aid to decision-making and not a replacement to it. More weded one is
to a technique or a tool; there is a danger of his interpreting every situation and finding a
solution limited only to the tool or technique known to him.

Mockler warns in his article on "Situational Theory of Management:”

“The situational approach starts with a manager working in a specific job

situation who recognizes that he must adapt any theory to meet his
specific needs. Any conflicts of theory arise from the job situation. For
example, if the work situation involves reconciling behavioral and
business needs the manager looks at both kinds of factors (human and
business), determines the impact of each on the situation, and balances
any conflicting requirements in his selection of and administration of a
course of action.

A conflict between the behavioral and mathematical schools of

management thought has no relevance to him at this point. He may look
to both areas for parts of his solution.” (3)

Sharing of views

Since handling a situation requires the use of creative, logical, and critical faculties of
the mind, the manager can use discussion as a useful tool to energize his mental
faculties.

Brainstorming techniques have been found to be useful in bringing to bear creative

aspects on to a situation or an issue. Criticism from various angles helps to analyze
various elements of a situation and various stages of the problem solving approach.
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3 Mockler, op,ch, p. 151

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However, summing up of various views or discussions does not lead to an integrated
decision or an integrated action plan. The decision still has to be the product of a single
mind, the decision maker.

Conclusion

In using the problem-solving and situational approach, the manager has to ask himself

1. Whether he has understood the situation by rigorously and repeatedly asking the
following questions:

What? When? How? Why?

Who(m)? Where? How much (many)?

2. Whether he has brought all his creative, logical, and critical thought processes to
bear on the following stages of analysis:

Problem(s) Decision/Recommendation
Criteria Action plan
Options Contingency plan

Moreover, he should guard himself against doing this thinking as merely a form filling
exercise. To sharpen his own thinking, it may be useful for him to discuss with others
and get them to share their understanding, analysis, and suggestions with him.

Finally, the manager must remember that decision making is not an act of summarizing
the views that he has elicited but an act of synthesizing them Into an Integrated decision
or recommendation and an integrated action plan. Decision making is an iterative act,
and one may remember the following philosophical lines of T.S. Eliot:

What we call the beginning is often the end

And to make an end is to make a beginning
The end is where we start from…....

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 Suggested Readings

Ackoff, Russel Lincoln. The Art of Problem Solving, New York: Wiley, 1977, 214 pp.

Kepner, Charles H., and Tregoe, Benjamin B. The Rational Manager: A Systematic Approach to Problem Solving and
Decision Making New York: McGraw Hill Book Co., 1965. 275 pp.

Mockler, Robert J. “Situational Theory of Management,” BHR, Vol. 49, No. 3, May-June 1971, 146-155

Rao, S. Sreenivas. Handbook for Writers and Editors, Ahmedabad: Academic Book Centre, 1983, Chapter 3.

Raymond, Thomas C. Problems in Business Administration: Analysis by the Case Method. New York, McGraw Hill
Book Co., 1964. Sadien I, Chapters 1-4.

Stryker, Perrin, “Can You Analyze This Problem?” HBR, Vol. 43, No. 3, May-June 1965, 73-78

“How to Analyze That Problem?” HBR, Vol. 43, No. 4, July-August, 1965, 99-110.

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