DailyPost 2065
INDIA – IN ETERNAL SEARCH OF DECISION MAKERS!
If we were to calculate the per unit time of discussion for every decision taken, we would be rated to have taken the maximum. The time would get manifold, if you take the differential levels where the discussion needs to happen officially, and if the wider civil society and media is taken into account, it would become even more difficult to calculate the overall time. A structured decision-making process leading to what we can call a decision does not happen. Decision is a watershed point in the history of the issue in question or not is the final arbiter of that decision. If you cannot make out a marked difference post the decision taken, it would have been better off without it. At least the issue would have remained alive for a better day, rather than claimed to be resolved.
What is a decision? Most of us feel that we understand what it is, but in reality, it is misunderstood as a proclamation or as an individual act. Decision is the end result of a long, protracted, relevant and mandated discussion by people who are empowered to decide, assisted and supplemented by experts of monumental value, through a structured process, to declare the final call on the subject. It is legal and official and binding on all. It is important for all in the process of decision making to understand their role; why they are a part of it, and fulfill what has neatly been cut out for them. Taking others’ roles or useless philosophising takes away the steam needed for the decision-making process to reach its logical conclusion. Equally important to knowing your role, it is also important the know the overall positioning of the problem / issue being put on the table for a surgical correction.
The ecosystem will finally decide how the decision will play out in the days to come. The ecosystem encompasses the backward and forward linkages and the decision should be competent enough to stand on its own feet. Decisions can only be validated in retrospect and cannot be declared as an outstanding feat, at outset itself. We have seen them falling by the wayside by the dozens. Our laws and our foundation stones stand as a mute testimony of what we have been able to deliver through those decisions. We have been laying the foundation stones of projects, which generally don’t see the light of the day. The time and cost overruns literally do away with whatever little benefit is generated, if and when it is completed.
If the experts who validate the tech and domain part of the decisions and the decision makers who finally take the call, are absolved of any ownership, responsibility and accountability, who will do the follow through and make it happen. It is decide and scoot and the same music keeps playing on at even higher decibels. India is in eternal search of decision makers, who can pull out the nation of complex problems, mostly man made in a methodical manner. The country knows and so should the decision makers; whatever cannot be translated into reality is not a decision. Have we become the land of failed decision makers? Don’t we manufacture the calibre called actionable decision making? Don’t we find it embarrassing that decisions don’t reach fruition, because of congenital flaws? Decision making does not hang in mid-air. It is at the center of the visionary life cycle consisting of; vision, decision and execution.
CAN EXECUTABLE DECISION MAKING ATTRIBUTE BE CREATED IN OUR LEADERS?
Sanjay Sahay