2.7 Academic Decision Making

All organizations rely on decision making; decisions about the future. The future can be in the short term (operational), a bit further out in time (tactical), and longer term (strategic). The decisions usually center around who will do what when, where, why, and how. The decisions are being made to stay or change the course; towards objectives and goals. This tangly bit of decision making is the focus of various scientific areas, including a subset of a psychology one called Organizational Psychology (focusing on planning). It is also looked at in Decision Sciences, Cognitive Science/AI. Fortunately, the fields of organizational planning, and skill and expertise in decision making happen to be research areas and specialties within the Science of Teaching authoring team.



We have not met anyone in our careers that consciously and knowingly makes a bad decision or tries to make a bad decision. They are making the best decision they can make. They are making the decision based on their exemplars (what they think others might do or have done) and based on their own experiences and training. And, they really think in the moment that the decision is the best for the situation. This makes it hard when the actual decision is not good, ‘it seemed like a good idea at time’; this is when people with a fixed mindset and latent insecurities can a little bit defensive (or a lot). They might not know what a bad decision is in the situation, or what a better decision or decision process might look like. In most cases, the intent and action is pure. It is what it is.

In addition, people constantly make decisions and this can lead people to think that they have been become skilled in decision making. However, unless decision making is practiced as a deliberate skill, with reflection and baseline comparisons, it is unlikely that the actual decision making skill will improve. This is especially true when the decision makers in one's past and current peer group all share the same background and experiences.

So, anyone can make a decision, but that does not make it a good decision. How does one develop the expertise and skill in order to make good operational, tactical, and strategic decisions. The answer is simple. You have to learn decision making. For example, knowing what decisions should or should not be made requires judgement. Knowing that a decision is required in the first place requires that the individual be aware and know that a decision situation exists. Should nothing be done? What should be done? When should it be done? What is it going to take to make it happen? And so forth.

We can perhaps look at how decision makers develop in the business world. Not all business decision makers are skilled (far from it), but attempts are made to develop them. How are decision makers developed in the business world?

• First, any decision maker, academic or business needs to understand the basic process of decision making, how to deal with biases, how to identify constraints, elasticity in the constraints, the concepts of critical paths and bottlenecks, planning, and the list goes on. Second, the decision maker needs to understand the general domain (e.g., academia, automotive supply chain, the area within academia or supply chain). Third, the decision maker needs to understand the history, context, and current situation of the specific decision and situation (e.g., this specific faculty, department, this specific factory). Without these three knowledge domains, the decision maker will not be effective or efficient. They might be lucky occasionally, but that is what it will be - luck. Decisions cannot be wisely made at arm's length or from outside!
• There are always exceptions, but in normal situations, people start off learning how to make operational decisions and develop skill and expertise at this level. Then, over time, perhaps five to ten years, they have developed enough expertise to take on the tactical decisions. And, after sufficient demonstration of mastery in planning, they get to the big table, the strategy decision playground. Rarely, does someone proceed without learning, training, mentoring, practice, and demonstrated evidence of decision making.
• In business, people are often identified as being potential managers and leaders. They are consciously put on a career path with the necessary experiences and opportunities; often starting off as an assistant or right arm helper, then getting the chance to do the job themselves, and on it goes, up through the ranks. The process is not perfect and the wrong individuals are sometimes identified for the wrong reasons, or the process is not designed.
• They start off helping, working with a project leader perhaps, then the first level manager, then second level. Often above the second level are things called senior managers or directors. At each level the risks and game increase. In what we consider to be good processes, it can take three to five years to reach the first level of management, perhaps longer, and five to ten to hit the second level. Directors and senior managers are often starting in their 40's and have had ten to fiften years of relevant decision making behind them. There are people who fast track, and there are organizations that promote by 'time' (e.g., every 18 months you get promoted regardless of demonstrated accomplishment), but in general, major organizations have a management track and a 'professional/technical' track for personnel development.
• Of course, people get promoted for all kinds of reasons and there can be times when people get promoted beyond their competence level; the Peter Principle.
• The better businesses are also aware of the importance of organizational knowledge (Fifth Discipline by Senge), continuity, contingency, single points of failure, and succession planning. They budget, train, and develop policies and methods to deal with these issues.
• That being said, we will assume that some kind of learning and experience takes place as someone is exposed to plans, budgets, personnel, etc. decision making. It can be ad hoc or consciously done, but they are cultivated, nurtured, taught how to make decisions: what factors to consider, the process of individual and group (team) decision making, budgeting, planning, project management, risk management, change management, HR and personnel development, and in some cases customer relationship management and marketing.
• As the decision maker moves from operational, to tactical, and to strategic, the focus of the work also moves and delegation occurs. Skilled strategic decision makers will not be seen to be micro managing at the operational or tactical level; others have been hired for those aspects and usually the strategic decision maker has enough important matters to attend to. They do not have time to micro manage and do their own day job effectively and efficiently. Succession planning and developing those following is also a common practice, along with mentoring.

At the end of the day, professional decision makers in business can still suck and be incompetent to some degree. The estimates are approximately 80%; consider the number of companies that fail, provide poor quality, poor service, or provide less than acceptable products. One can say that these are all the results of poor quality decision making. Choosing the wrong things to do at the wrong time, the wrong way, by the wrong people, with the wrong resources, etc. But, there are also skilled and competent managers that exist and it is possible to encounter these and use them as mentors and exemplars.

It is sometimes observed that the best managers and leaders are the ones who do not want to be managers and leaders. They are chosen, they are not trying to be promoted. Their career aspirations were not to be top dog. They do not want to be the manager because of their ego or delusionary thinking. They can manage, they can lead, but they are also happy just doing 'the work'. They are happy to be the power behind the throne. These are the best managers and leaders in our opinion. They might end up being a manager or leader, but it is because of their demonstrated competence and accomplishments along the way and not because they were self-promoting, marketing themselves, or doing certain things to get ahead.

Observations about academia decision making...

• Academia is a strange situation. We regularly take people who might have exceptional skill and expertise in their research specialty and make them decision makers; with no training and no experience. They might have worked with graduate students and possibly lab assistants, but this is not the same as hiring full time employees with career aspirations in real jobs with real budget implications, customers, project planning, reporting, and oversight.
• We seem to assume that academics know what decisions should be made and how the decisions should be made; without any training or development program for how to make decisions.
• Without training and experience, it is difficult to know what the role is and how to perform the role. For example, how is one to know what is a priority, what is a risk, what could be a risk and know what to escalate, or ask for help about. For example, when should a student's behavior be escalated to others in a position of high authority? How should issues be dealt with? It can be difficult to know 'what is our job', and the reverse 'not our job'.
• We appear to assume that academics through osmosis and because they can 'research', know how to competently plan, perform risk management, manage change, track progress, identify issues, and mobilize resources so that things get done when they should, to the desired quality.
• We provide administrative assistants of various sorts to academics to help a bit with this, but this is not the same as having a senior manager who has previously done the tasks performed by the assistants with the many years of learning the subtlties of how to do things, including how to run effective and efficient meetings, run task forces, evaluate processes, and the like. It is like doing an undergraduate degree with all 1A courses; there will be some knowledge and skill, but in reality the level will be just above naive and 'junior' thinker level for most. This is not to fault the individual, the system has not been constructed to produce anything different. The focus is on research and teaching, not developing the decision making skills it takes to be an effective and efficient manager or leader.
• When it comes to academic leadership, we do not seem to be aware of the importance of organizational knowledge, continuity, contingency, single points of failure, and succession planning. We do not budget, train, and develop policies and methods to deal with these.
• To make matters worse, there are academics who do not recognize or understand the training, experience, skills and knowledge needed to be a good decision maker; they assume that skills such as planning and decision making can by done by anyone and if you have successfully got an advanced degree, you can do any task such as being a Chair, Assoc. Chair, Deans, and other senior jobs within the institution. The fields of Organizational Planning, Decision Sciences, and Cognitive Science tell us that this is not so.
• All of these various assumptions are flawed. The normal academic has never had to make ongoing, sustained operational decisions, tactical, or strategic. A typical academic does not hire long term personnel, deal with a department, bankruptcy, takeovers, real 'customers', face real deadlines with huge consequences, held accountable for waste and inefficiency, and so forth. We do make decisions which are operational, tactical, and operational, but that does not mean that these are at any skill level above naive or junior. They might not be better than what the person did as a freshman.
• There is a phrase we have often heard 'I can manage xxx, I can manage anything'. This is a false claim. Just because someone can manage to pull off a research agenda and be promoted through the ranks, does not mean that the same individual can manage their way out of a paper bag. Some can, many cannot.
• When we have done teamwork excercises with academics, similar to those we do with 1A's, the academics fared no better than the 1A's. There were the same project management issues, communication issues, and working together issues.

Moving forward...

• To be an effective and efficient decision maker, one needs to understand the domain in general, the basic skills of decision making, and the specific context or instance. Without these three knowledge domains, less than optimal decisions will be made (McKay et al. 2015). The institution should recognize that decision making is a cognitive skill and move towards developing these skills.
• Identify and leverage the good decision makers. There are academics that do make good decisions. The ones we have observed understand their limitations, seek advice, and do not assume that they know it all. They do not assume that they cannot make mistakes. They try to avoid knee-jerk reactions. They assemble a good team of advisors within and without of the academic ranks.
• Junior academics can shadow and learn from the current incumbents; this is before being suddenly put in a position of authority and then start asking past incumbents what to do. This is a better way to learn, to learn patterns, to observe the process of decision making and to observe how things turned out.
• Experienced decision makers (true experience, not freshly minted graduates) can be hired within the institution to help with teaching and training academics how to do project planning, process evaluations, change management. Academics should be given short courses on decision making, time management, meeting management, team management, and management skills; and be given the opportunity to practice and develop theirs skills prior to being assigned a position of authority. There should be courses and programs for academics who wish to pursue administration or who are selected by their peers to administer. This is all part of being professional and not amateur.
• Ensure that academics understand that problems are not often solved in a one-two committee meeting, but are analysed and potential solutions by qualitified individuals offline and then brought to the committee for discussion.

Last thoughts...

• Just because someone asks you to take on a role, does not mean that you know how to do the role, that you know how to make good decisions in this specific situation. Competent decision making in one context may allow for near transference to another similar context, but far transfer should not be assumed.
• Just because someone calls you a manager, does not mean that you are actually making manager like decisions, or that you know how to be a manager.
• Just because you are making good manager type decisions does not mean that you are a leader. Being a leader is different than being a manager. A leader needs a growth mindset, and other skills and traits.
• A manager can sometimes function with a fixed mindset and hold the course, steady as she goes, no innovations, no changes, no setting of precedents, 'leave it to others', 'everything is fine', 'we are good'. This may keep the status quo going; for better or for worse.
• Just because you have been made a decision maker does not mean that you have to make every decision yourself. It is ok to have a team of advisors and seek guidance.
• This is all part of understanding the difference between a professional and amateur decision maker. Sadly, there are few professional decision makers to be found in the academic ranks; it is the nature of the beast and not the fault of the individual faculty members, it is the fault of the institution.

Further reading

• Amann, W. (2021). Building a leadership pipeline for deans in business schools. Thesis: Doctor Of Education, University of Liverpool.
• Frese, M., Mumford, M. D., & Gibson, C. (2015). Organizational planning. In M. D. Mumford & M. Frese (Eds.), The psychology of planning in organizations: Research and applications (pp. 1–8). Routledge/Taylor & Francis Group.
• McKay, K.N., Waefler, T. and W. van Wezel (2015) Expertise in Organizational Planning: Impact on Performance, in The Psychology of Planning in Organizations: Research and Applications. M. Frese and M. Mumford (eds), Taylor and Francis, New York, pp. 200-228.
• Senge, P. (1990). The Fifth Discipline, Doubleday.