None of this is new, yet I find it very disturbing. These two behaviors are ones that I have fought against all my life — even before I graduated from college. And I think the two behaviors described above are linked. The person making a recommendation that he or she knows the boss likes, then becomes a decision-maker and that is how they expect others who support him to do the same.
This is as wrong as wrong can be. The role of a staff person is to consider all the facts; assemble a list of assumptions; consider courses of action; establish the pros and cons for those options; and make a recommendation based on the best analysis of what will accomplish the most good. This is what supporting staff are supposed to do to make the boss look good. To do otherwise is being disloyal to the person you serve and support.
When you deviate from the above all you really care about is your own skin and how you look to others — especially the boss.
In a session I attended yesterday it was proposed that perhaps the best thing to do to support better decision-making is to hire one person who would attend meetings and present dissenting opinions on every topic. The message could be delivered without risk to their job, because they were doing exactly what they were hired for.
I believe that after a short period of time that person's opinion would be immediately dismissed, especially if operating in an environment where this was expected of them.
Poor decision-making leads to disasters like the Challenger Shuttle exploding, when group think took over and information with a contrary view to launch was never brought forward. While the poor decisions being made in board rooms and government offices are not as dramatic as the video of the Challenger exploding the impacts are going off like fireworks all around us.
The next time you have a dissenting view to express and you hold back on providing information to the decision-maker, examine your reasons for doing so.
