Long Beach City College Factor Influencing Decision Making PPT

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Hello I need to make a powerpoint with notes to the powerpoint and 6 questions with answers from this article.I have to present the notes from the article in class so please make it understandable. ex; if you do one slide make notes for that one and so on I need at least 15 slides the notes should be 15 min worth of presentation time. and 15 min of a discussions which are the 6 questions. Article Expert/Facilitation (15%)You will participate in a team that will make a presentation and facilitate the discussion on two one assigned article. Team designations and Article assignments will be decided on during the first Live Zoom Session. Your team You will serve as the instructor for the assigned article. The presentation will be judged on how well it captures the author’s key points, how it demonstrates the relationship of the article’s key points to the study of public administration, and how the key concepts could be used in practice. The presentation must actively involve each member of the team. You will have 30 minutes total for your presentation and interactive activities (e.g., break out sessions, Kahoot!, etc.). You should make a 15 minute presentation on your findings and use the remaining 15 minutes for class engagement and discussion. .Article Presentation and Discussion Facilitation Grading Criteria Rubric – 100 Points Article Presentation and Discussion Facilitation__/50 points (50 points possible for each article)Presentation identifies all of the main issues in the article; provides clear focus and uses conceptual application from course readings. Facilitation is relevant and promotes in-depth analysis of material. Makes particularly insightful contributions to the understanding of fellow students and offers instructive contributions. (50)Presentation identifies most of the main issues in the article; may have a clear focus but may not support all issues with conceptual ideas applied from the course readings. Facilitation is relevant. Makes some contributions that advance the understanding of class members. (44)Presentation Identifies some of the issues in the article presenting inconsistencies or incoherence in facts and data; focus and conceptual ideas not presented. Lacks contributions that advance the understanding of the class members. (38)

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Steven Kelman
Harvard University
Ronald Sanders
Gayatri Pandit
Booz Allen Hamilton
“I Won’t Back Down?” Complexity and Courage
in Government Executive Decision Making
Abstract: Senior government executives make many difficult decisions, but research suggests that individual cognitive
limitations and the pathologies of “groupthink” impede their ability to make value-maximizing choices. From this
literature has emerged a normative model that Irving Janis calls “vigilant problem solving,” a process intended for the
most complex decisions. To explore its use by senior public officials, the authors interviewed 20 heads of subcabinetlevel organizations in the U.S. federal government, asking how they made their most difficult decisions. The initial
focus was on whether they employed a vigilant approach to making decisions that were informationally, technically,
or politically complex. Most executives identified their single most-difficult decision as one that required courage; they
often made such courageous decisions after personal reflection and/or consultation with a small number of trusted
advisors rather in ways that could be described as vigilant. The different approaches for making complex decisions,
compared with those involving courage, are discussed and a contingency model of effective executive decision making is
proposed that requires leaders (and their advisors) to be “ambidextrous” in their approach.
Practitioner Points
• Government leaders must be able to distinguish between decisions that require complex analysis and those
for which the difficulty is not determining the right thing to do but having the courage actually to do it.
Executives should be prepared to employ different decision-making processes depending on the type of
decision.
• For decisions that involve technically complex issues, senior government executives should exercise
“vigilance” in their deliberations by seeking more (and more diverse) sources of input and information, so as
to include the views of their civil service staff and other advisors.
• In addition, “vigilant” public sector executives who are faced with complex decisions should not rush to
judgment or reveal their initial predisposition to those advising them; indeed, they should be ready to change
that predisposition if faced with compelling input to the contrary.
• On the other hand, government leaders faced with a courageous “do the right thing” decision should be
more introspective, reflecting on their personal values and limiting their deliberations to a small group of
trusted, supportive advisors; in the end, they should trust their gut.
S
enior government executives make many
difficult decisions, typically defined in the
literature as those that are very complex—
requiring lots of information, fraught with uncertainty
or ambiguity, and involving hard trade-offs among
conflicting values or interests (George 1972; Janis
1982; Nutt 1989). Examples range from decisions
involving the design of government health care
policies to tough budget decisions made in a fiscally
constrained environment.
Making effective decisions under these circumstances
is challenging. Cognitive limitations preclude
individuals from fully considering all relevant
information, and cognitive biases can also interfere
with their information gathering and analysis. The
decision maker can compensate for such individual
limits by seeking out advisors and/or other sources of
input. However, the literature on “groupthink” also
highlights the limitations of group-based decision
making. Out of these two areas of decision research
has emerged an approach that Janis (1989) calls
“vigilant problem solving,” a process in which the
decision maker solicits input from advisors who are
deliberately selected for their diverse knowledge and
opinions and in which the leader actively seeks out
dissenting views, critically examines the costs and risks
of the preferred (and other) choices, and demonstrates
a willingness to revise his or her initial predispositions
in response to the deliberations. Vigilant problem
solving is widely seen as the most effective process for
making difficult decisions.
Steven Kelman is Weatherhead
Professor of Public Management in the
John F. Kennedy School of Government at
Harvard University. Since graduating summa
cum laude from Harvard University, he has
authored many books and articles on the
policy-making process and on improving the
management of government organizations.
Serving in positions such as administrator of
the Office of Federal Procurement Policy in
the Office of Management and Budget and
director of the Procurement Roundtable,
he has become a fellow of the National
Academy of Public Administration and
received the Herbert Roback Memorial
Award (2001) and the Gaus Prize (2010).
He currently serves as editor of the
International Public Management
Journal.
E-mail: steve_kelman@hks.harvard.edu
Ronald Sanders is vice president
of Booz Allen Hamilton and its first
fellow. Joining the firm as its human
capital consulting lead after 37 years in
government, he previously served as the
intelligence community’s chief human
capital officer, associate director of the
Office of Personnel Management, chief
human resources officer of the Internal
Revenue Service, and civilian personnel
director of the U.S. Department of
Defense. A National Academy of Public
Administration fellow, he received his
doctorate from George Washington
University and has served on the faculties
of Syracuse University’s Maxwell School,
George Washington University, and the
Brookings Institution.
E-mail: sanders_ron@bah.com
Gayatri Pandit is an associate at
Booz Allen Hamilton. She has more than
12 years of human capital experience,
evaluating human capital processes and
supporting strategic alignment. She has led
and supported organizational assessment
and design efforts, staffing studies,
competency model development and
validation studies, and change management
and implementation efforts. Previously,
she served as a research fellow in the
George Washington University’s Human
and Organizational Learning program and
research center.
E-mail: pandit_gayatri@bah.com
Public Administration Review,
Vol. 76, Iss. 3, pp. 465–471. © 2015 by
The American Society for Public Administration.
DOI: 10.1111/puar.12476.
“I Won’t Back Down?” Complexity and Courage in Government Executive Decision Making 465
For this article, we interviewed 20 heads of subcabinet-level
organizations in the U.S. federal government, all serving during
the Barack Obama administration, and asked each the same set of
questions about how they made important decisions. Ten of those
executives were nominated by “good government” experts as ones
who had done an outstanding job, and 10 were chosen at random
from a listing of all federal subcabinet and equivalent positions.
Our goal was to see whether there were significant differences in the
extent to which executives in the two categories used a “vigilant”
process when making difficult decisions.
decision maker’s initial impressions “are remarkably perseverant and
unresponsive to new input, even when such input logically negates
the original basis for the impressions” (Ross, Lepper, and Hubbard
1975, 880; see also Lord, Ross, and Lepper 1979).
One strategy for dealing with the cognitive limitations associated
with making complex decisions is to simplify the decision-making
process. This idea was introduced into the public administration
literature in Lindblom’s classic Public Administration Review article,
“The Science of Muddling Through” (1959), one of the most
frequently cited works in public administration and organization
theory (Bendor 2015). Bendor (2015) notes, however, that the
methods that Lindblom suggested for simplifying decisions never
generated a research tradition and have largely disappeared from
the discourse on decision making; however, we suspect that if
asked, many scholars and practitioners would probably agree that
Lindblom’s ideas have substantial merit.
What we found surprised us. Asked in our interviews to discuss
their “most difficult” decision, most of the executives in our sample
(including 9 of 10 outstanding ones) did not identify those that were
technically complex. Rather, the vast majority described their most
difficult decision as one that was unpopular or involved significant
personal, political, or organizational risk—in other words, decisions
that required courage. What made those decisions so difficult was
not necessarily knowing the right thing to do but having the will
A different approach, which also owes its public administration
to do it. As a result of this finding, we shifted our initial research
origins to Lindblom, is not necessarily to simplify the decisionfocus from whether outstanding executives are
making process but to involve more people
more likely than their peers to use a vigilant
in it. If cognitive limitations and biases
If cognitive limitations and
process when making difficult decisions to
create problems for an individual making
biases create problems for an
one that examined the distinctions between
a decision alone, then one alternative
individual making a decision
decisions involving courage (an area that
is for that individual decision maker to
alone, then one alternative is for seek and synthesize multiple sources of
lacks substantial research or a widely accepted
theoretical foundation) and those involving
information and perspectives. In addressing
that individual decision maker
complexity.
the impediments to fully rational decision
to seek and synthesize multimaking, Lindblom posits that in this way, an
ple sources of information and
As we did so, the classic Tom Petty song “I
individual’s own cognitive limitations and
perspectives.
Won’t Back Down” came to mind. Is Petty’s
biases can be mitigated: “Multiplicity copes
admonition good advice for executives
with the inevitability of omission and other
faced with difficult decisions? The literature recommends
errors in complex problem solving” (1965, 151). The literature on
otherwise, advising the decision maker to seek varied sources of
decision making in teams and groups also suggests improved results
input and information and to “back down” from his or her initial
from greater diversity of thought, including that as this may serve
predisposition when faced with compelling alternative views that
to counteract the cognitive biases of individual members (e.g., Jehn,
may call initial assumptions or inclinations into question. However,
Northcraft, and Neale 1999; Kahneman 2011).
our research suggests that while vigilance may be ideally suited to
decisions involving complexity, it may not be appropriate when a
While Lindblom emphasized the value of multiple sources of
difficult decision has more to do with courage. For these kinds of
information and opinion in the formulation of policy in the
decisions, our research posits that Petty’s lyrical declaration may in
political system as a whole, and the team literature looked at
fact be the better course. We describe the results of this research in
decision making in relatively egalitarian groups, often at a micro
detail in this article, and, based on our preliminary conclusions,
level, an additional literature, closer to the concerns of this article,
we postulate a contingency model for effective executive decision
has looked at the way advisors can best provide input to the
making in which the optimum approach may depend on whether
decisions of top organizational leaders. George (1972; see also
the decision involves complexity or courage.
Porter 1982), arguing for what he called “multiple advocacy” in
the organization of advice to a leader, basically suggested a top
“Vigilant” Decision Making
leadership decision-making process characterized by the kind of
The original basis for our research was the literature on effective
multiple inputs and points of view that Lindblom had advocated for
decision making. That literature (e.g., Braybrooke and Lindblom
policy making.
1963; March and Simon 1958) notes that to make a “rational,”
value-maximizing decision, one would need to list all alternative
However, the research on group-based decision making also notes
strategies, determine all of the consequences of those alternatives,
that there are inherent pathologies that inhibit the helpful flow
comparatively evaluate those consequences in light of the decision
of diverse information and perspectives. The best known is Janis’s
maker’s values, and select the alternative that is most consistent
work (1982, 1989) on “groupthink”—a phenomenon in which
with those values. However, as critics have noted, it is impossible
leaders and/or members of a group, in an effort to achieve harmony
to realize this ideal because of data-gathering and analysis burdens.
and consensus, suppress dissent, avoid conflict, ignore additional
Research on cognitive biases (e.g., Bazerman and Moore 2012;
potentially conflicting information and views, and conform
Kahneman 2011) has added other concerns, suggesting that a
around a particular decision or outcome without full consideration
466
Public Administration Review • May | June 2016
of alternatives. These pathologies arise not only from cognitive
limitations but also from group leader and member needs for
affiliation (emotional support from the group), as well as personal
agendas that leaders and advisors may pursue (Janis 1989).
a senior journalist from a media outlet that specializes in covering
government management. We sent each of these individuals a letter
stating, inter alia,
We are asking for your help in identifying senior-level
As noted at the outset, Janis offers an alternative, a “vigilant”
subcabinet executives who have served in the Obama
decision-making model designed to overcome both individual
Administration, and whose performance in managing and
cognitive limitations and the pathology of groupthink. This model
leading their organization has been outstanding. We are
posits that a decision maker can make more effective decisions by
focusing in the first instance on individuals at the assistant
seeking information and input from a group of advisors carefully
secretary level, but these executives may also have titles such
selected for their diversity of experience, knowledge, and points of
as Administrator, Commissioner, or Director…as well as
view and by actively soliciting their dissenting views, considering
executives with cross-cutting management responsibilities
new information, challenging initial assumptions, and critically
(such as CXO’s).
examining the costs and risks of preferred and
alternative choices. Vigilant decision making
Vigilant decision making is spe- You may define “outstanding performance”
is specifically designed to avoid too much
as you feel appropriate, but we ask you
cifically designed to avoid too
agreement and a quick rush to judgment by
to think about executives who have made
much agreement and a quick
a group. Its prescription is “more is better”—
a significant contribution to improved
rush to judgment by a group.
more information, more discussion, and more
results delivered by their organization,
opportunities for debate and dissent.
without regard to whether you personally
agree or disagree with the executive’s substantive policy
Unlike Lindblom’s approach, the “vigilant” model has engendered a
agenda.
fairly significant body of research that generally finds support (for a
summary, see Kelman et al. 2014). However, most of that research
Responses were received from 38 NAPA and Partnership for Public
involves major foreign policy, military, or presidential decision
Service luminaries, providing a total of 93 nominations. All 16
making; there are few empirical studies on decision making in the
federal government officials and experts replied, providing an
normal operations of federal agencies, particularly domestic agencies additional 107 nominations. Based on those responses, executives
(inasmuch as national security decisions are more insulated from
were included in our “outstanding” group if they received two
transparency demands and requirements such as the Administrative
or more separate nominations from both experts and luminaries;
Procedure Act). Thus, the main research question we originally
four or more separate nominations from experts alone; or three or
sought to examine was the extent to which decision processes of
more separate nominations from our luminaries, as well as at least
senior U.S. federal subcabinet executives generally corresponded to
one expert. In all, 11 executives qualified as outstanding based on
the ideal of vigilant decision making. We also wanted to examine
these criteria. However, one was eliminated because the person was
whether outstanding executives used more a more vigilant decisionassigned to an organization that we judged to be too small to be
making process than their peers—suggesting that one reason they
relevant to our study.
were successful was that they had done so. However, some of the
findings from our interviews caused us to explore a topic we did not We drew our comparison group from the most recent (2008)
originally intend to examine: decision making when the choices are
“Plum Book” (officially titled United States Government Policy and
not complex but rather require courage to make. That is the subject
Supporting Positions), which is published every four years by the
of this article.
U.S. Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental
Affairs. We used a random-number generator to select from among
Data and Methods
officials in positions with the titles assistant secretary, undersecretary,
For this study, we interviewed 10 “outstanding” federal subcabinetadministrator, director, and department-level chief financial officer,
level executives and a comparison group of 10 randomly chosen
chief information officer, and chief human capital officer; we
peers of comparable rank and responsibility. To identify those
included comparable positions in the three military departments
outstanding executives, we used a “reputational approach”
because of their size, but we excluded assistant secretaries for public
(Dahl 1961; Wolfinger 1960), soliciting nominations from
and/or legislative affairs and general counsels, as well as positions
“luminaries” who were experts on the U.S. federal government,
from organizations that we judged to be too small in comparison to
including the 677 peer-elected fellows of the National Academy
those represented in our “outstanding” group, for a total N of 388.
of Public Administration (NAPA), as well as the Partnership for
However, because the result included a disproportionate number
Public Service’s 74 Strategic Advisors to Government Executives
of chief financial officers (CFOs) and chief information officers
(SAGEs), a peer-elected group of former senior federal officials in
(CIOs) (4 of the 10), we split the selection of the comparison group
information technology, acquisition, financial management, and
into two: one for CFOs and CIOs and one for all other positions.
human capital management. We also solicited nominations from
Note that four selectees in the comparison group declined to
a group of 16 current and former senior government officials and
participate and were replaced using the same method.
experts from the Office of Management and Budget, Government
Accountability Office, professional staff of the Senate Homeland
We conducted interviews of all 20 executives during the last year
Security and Governmental Affairs and House Oversight and
of the first term of the Obama administration, as well as the first
Government Reform committees, former members of Congress, and year of the second Obama term. Each respondent was interviewed
“I Won’t Back Down?” Complexity and Courage in Government Executive Decision Making 467
in person, generally for two to four hours; interviews were recorded
and then transcribed verbatim, resulting in more than 2,000 pages
of transcript. Interviews followed a standard format, consisting
primarily of open-ended questions. Among other things, we asked
about each respondent’s approach to decision making, to include
their typical sources of information and advice; their techniques for
encouraging discussion and dissent; and examples of situations in
which they had changed their original predisposition to the decision.
The last question in the part of our interview protocol dealing
with decision making was, “Please think about the single most
difficult major decision you have made on this job. What was the
decision? Why was it difficult? How did you go about making the
decision?” This line of inquiry was intended to elicit more detailed
information about our original research focus on vigilant decision
making, and, in keeping with the literature regarding what makes
decisions difficult, we expected respondents to describe decisions
that were cognitively complex. However, as noted earlier, that did
not turn out to be the case.
We acknowledge that our data were gathered from a very small
sample. However, it was not feasible to interview a large sample
of top federal leaders at the level of detail we required. A large-N
survey likely would not achieve a significant response rate among
our target group, nor would it provide the rich detail we were
seeking. Thus, as is common in qualitative research, we sacrificed
breadth for depth. However, in so doing, we attempted to ensure
rigor by systematically choosing respondents, using a standard
interview protocol to gather hundreds of pages of transcribed
responses, and analyzing the content of those responses using both
computer-based and human scoring. Still, we present our results
here as suggestive only, in the tradition of utilizing qualitative
research to help generate theory rather than to test it (Edmondson
and McManus 2007).
Results
As noted, our central finding surprised us. When we asked
respondents why their most difficult decision was so difficult,
we expected them to say that it was because it was so complex.
However, only 1 of the 10 outstanding executives (and 5 of the
10 in the comparison group)1 cited complexity as the reason for
the difficulty of their decision. The others said it was because the
decision was unpopular, emotionally wrenching, or went against the
counsel of their advisors, hierarchical superiors, or powerful external
organizations.
For example, three of the most difficult decisions cited by our
outstanding executives involved going against organizations
such as the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and
the Government Accountability Office or the executive’s own
organizational superiors. An excerpt from one of our interviews is
representative:
Congress had passed major legislation affecting the agency’s
mission, and the agency needed to move to implement this
legislation. However, the government was in the middle
of budget-crisis land and continuing resolutions and the
beginning of the [presidential] campaign at that time, and
OMB simply did not want to support us in getting moving
468
Public Administration Review • May | June 2016
on [this]. So I had to make the decision, do I just eat this or
do I hope for the best? I was kind of, in a way, left fighting the
fight myself, you know, so a guy with fewer tools and smaller
tools up against people who can be very hard to deal with. So
I had to go really kind of go toe-to-toe with OMB and say,
“Absolutely not. I am going to go tell Congress directly that
I need an [exception], and I don’t care. You can fire me. You
only get to do that once. I dare you. And I’m going to go get
this because I’ve got to have it to implement this legislation.”
You always have a choice. And not fighting is actually not that
hard of a choice in government because there’s so little actual
accountability. So at the end of the day, on all of these things,
I’ve had to just say, “All right, I know what I’m going to do.
I’m going to go do it.”
The other six involved decisions with diffuse benefits and
concentrated costs (Olson 1982)—that is, diffuse benefits to the
public as a whole (in the form of better government), compared
with tangible costs to specific units or employees within the
organization. Such decisions are widely unpopular among those
with whom the executive deals and often emotionally wrenching.
Thus, three of those six involved decisions to cancel or curtail
programs over the strong objections of the organizational units
managing them. For example, one outstanding executive recounted,
We decided to stop 45 programs. What was difficult about
that is it’s the caliber of hard decision that has a huge impact
on an agency. I’m asking my Cabinet Secretary boss I’d been
working for, for exactly thirty days, to trust me on this one.
…I’m not wading into the pool. I’m going to belly-smacker
this thing, and it’s either going to work really well or it’s going
to be really bad.
The final three decisions involved the termination of individual
longtime career managers, downsizing, or a significant restructuring
of the executive’s organization and its jobs. The following is an
excerpt from one of these interviews:
Adverse personnel decisions are tough because they impact
individuals—immediate feedback, impact on specific
individuals, so if you have any compassion, it’s hard. [One of
my senior career executives] thought his own performance was
outstanding, I thought it wasn’t, and I needed to take it up
a notch. I needed somebody more engaged, less ceremonial,
who just attended meetings and carried the title. He thought
his record showed tangible, definable things he could
demonstrate to support his viewpoint, I thought in many
cases these things cut in the opposite direction…showed he
was not collaborative, didn’t work well with teammates, didn’t
inform me and others of developments. He was a classic
negative SES [Senior Executive Service] model of hiding
problems, hoping nobody will ever know. He wanted to keep
superiors and peers out of his work, he had a real sense of
proprietorship and ownership, a classic turf-ist. Also, he had
the attitude, “I have a big title, I want a big office, I have a
lot of staff, I will sign up for the big meetings, and others
will do the work.” So I had a long process of establishing the
performance measures, having a conversation about what
his performance was. He refused to sign his performance
assessment. I had to explain to him this position was not
his personal job, it belongs to the institution. He associated
himself personally with the job. [Terminating him] was one of
those things we needed to do, I knew we needed to do it.
All of these executives—outstanding and comparison group alike—
used strikingly similar words when describing their courageous
decisions. For example, one stated that “ultimately, I had to make
a decision that we weren’t going to yield on the requirement, that
doing the right thing long-term was more important to the longterm viability of the program.” Another told us, “I finally concluded
[the program] could not be made to work…And I was not willing
to implement a public program I believe is flawed.” A third stated,
“Well, there were certainly a lot of people that thought we should
continue [the program], but in the end, I mean, it was my call
because the leader of that organization was looking to me to make
that recommendation, right?”
The executives who made these decisions knew “the right thing to
do” (of course, given that many of these decisions were unpopular,
others would almost certainly disagree with them).2 However, they
also knew that doing the right thing would be exceedingly difficult.
The conflict they faced was between taking the easy way out,
and thus avoiding aversive personal consequences, and behaving
courageously despite such consequences. Because the decisions were
painful, making them required courage. In all of these cases, the
executive chose the decision he or she regarded as painful but right.
As we noted earlier, our initial research sought to examine the
extent to which senior executives used a vigilant decision-making
process. For those decisions that we classified as technically
complex, we found that to be true—executives consulted multiple
advisors, gathered additional information from a variety of sources,
encouraged dissent, and deliberately avoided rushing to judgment.
But little of that vigilance was present when they discussed decisions
that we classified as courageous. Only three of the nine outstanding
executives who made courageous decisions reported that they
gathered significant new information to help them do so.
Discussion
As the literature suggests, the “vigilant” decision-making model
was specifically developed for decisions that are technically
complex. However, as noted, those respondents who made
courageous decisions did not employ that model. Rather, their
courageous decisions were more likely to involve reflection and
introspection, with consultation, if any, limited to a small group
of trusted advisors. Thus, we posit that while vigilant decision
making makes sense when faced with complexity (including
complex decisions involving difficult ethical dilemmas), it is less
relevant when decisions require courage. In the spirit of Tom
Petty’s song, those decisions require someone who is not willing
to “back down” from doing the right thing. And doing so requires
character and courage.
What underlies courageous decisions? The research in this area
is much more recent and sparse than the literature on decisions
involving complexity. Aquino and Reed suggest that some
people have a “moral identity” and a “self-conception organized
around a set of moral traits” (2002, 1424) that may ultimately
cause them to do the right thing. In this regard, Hannah and
Avolio (2010) posit that the decision maker must have a sense
of “moral potency” and ” a “sense of ownership over the moral
aspects of one’s environment”—that is, a kind of self-efficacy
that makes a person feel that his or her decisions can make a
difference.
But even for an executive with a moral identity, making a
courageous decision is hard. The easy way out is to avoid an