Decision-Making versus Implementation

DR. ICHAK ADIZES explores the different qualities and skills needed to make a decision and then to implement it – when to be open-minded and when to be closed-minded, and how to find a common interest so that all stakeholders can work together to implement a decision.

- DR. ICHAK ADIZES

It is almost human, so to say, that a decision will be made but not carried out. Like a decision to start a diet, or exercising, or to stop yelling. For decisions that involve major change, there is a doubt whether they will be implemented.

There are many courses that tell us how to make a good decision, but I have not seen any on how to implement what was decided.

Business Schools, for instance, teach only how to make good decisions, whether it is in marketing, in strategy, or in any other field necessary for leading a company, but to my knowledge there is not one course on how to successfully implement decisions. Apparently, there’s an erroneous assumption that if we make a good decision, it will be implemented.

It ain’t so.

Often, very good decisions are made but we don't implement them, and we implement decisions that we know are not good, like smoking, or over drinking.

I suggest that what makes for a good decision are not the same factors that will cause efficient implementation.